The Republicans' Dirty Little Secret

Get out of the way? I don't think so. We don't want a big bureaucratic government, but the times absolutely require ACTIVE government.

Mitt Romney and the trickle-downistas in Congress want you to believe that if government just "gets out of the way," jobs will magically appear out of thin air. Hey presto! They want you to believe in laissez-faire government -- that we should leave the economy alone. That was a fine theory in the 18th and 19th centuries, thank you very much Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And it may still have been an OK strategy in the early 20th century. But once globalization and technology made the world flat and interconnected... laissez-faire became obsolete. Why? Because our global economic competitors don't abide by those rules. Those competitor nations are hungry, actively intervening in the so-called "free market," to lure jobs for their citizens. Yet Romney and his Congressional allies desperately cling to the theories espoused by Adam Smith in the 1700s, hoping that we can return to those old days when our economy was isolated, not impacted by our economic competitors.

Almost every state's economic development agency identifies sectors to pursue and the governors offer partnerships, tax incentives, infrastructure and training to lure those sectors and create jobs for their people. The Republicans' dirty little secret is that their governors intervene in the "free market" all the time to poach jobs from other states. They actively pick "winners and losers" every single day. Mitt Romney did it as governor of Massachusetts. I did it in Michigan. We all do.

And that's what kills me about today's dueling speeches. Romney knows that governors don't have the resources to compete against China or India. A state alone can't match the offers of an entire country. The only place states can compete is against other states, using tax incentives to lure businesses from each other. That is stupid national economy policy. It's like moving the chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.

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