In response to today’s announcement that Democratic legislative leaders plan to introduce a “Nevada Jobs Bill,” which would commit up to $1 billion to a “jobs fund” in order to finance public-works projects within the state, Geoffrey Lawrence, deputy director of policy at the Nevada Policy Research Institute, offered the following comments:
“Government make-work programs have a well-documented history of failing to create long-term economic growth. The announced ‘Nevada Jobs Bill’ and its touted benefits are based on a flawed analysis and will only exacerbate Nevada’s economic woes.
“Senate Majority Leader Horsford claims that new government spending will have job-creating, ‘multiplier’ effects on the economy. Yet, he ignores that the $1 billion he proposes to spend will first have to be taken from Nevada’s private sector.
“While the precise details of the plan are not yet known, taking money from the private sector will destroy already-existing jobs and result in an off-setting, negative ‘multiplier’ effect as taxpayers lose disposable income. The analysis that legislative leaders are using to tout the plan’s benefits ignores this basic fact.
“This new ‘jobs’ proposal is really about putting the interests of favored unions ahead of the interests of Nevada’s families and workers. There is simply no way the legislative leadership’s job-creation estimates can be accurate — unless they’re counting on $1 billion falling out of the sky.
“Nevada taxpayers should beware this scheme, and should instead heed the advice Gov. Sandoval offered last month regarding job creation.”
Last month, Gov. Brian Sandoval’s administration said that the goal of job creation “is best accomplished by private sector growth. The strategy of spending public money we don’t have may yield short-term gains for some, but do long-term damage to the economy as a whole.”
