Pat Bauer Admits Unemployment Higher Than Claimed By Obama Administration

Indiana House Democratic Leader Pat Bauer (D-South Bend) pens a column in today's Star in opposition to Republican legislative efforts to make Indiana a right to work state. In it, Bauer admits the actual unemployment rate is much higher than the unemployment rate statistics touted by the Obama administration, particularly after the federal government manipulated the way the statistics are calculated so that many unemployed simply no longer exists in the eyes of the government. Using the Obama administration statistics, Indiana's unemployment rate is supposedly 9%. Bauer pegs the actual number at over 16%.

It is a joke to claim that right to work will provide more jobs for Hoosiers at a time when our true unemployment rate (counting people who have given up looking for work) is over 16 percent. Those one in six Hoosiers who don’t have a job don’t think it’s funny.

Bauer is also offering hope that Democrats this next legislative session will stay on the job and offer their own proposals rather than flee the state in order to shut down the legislature as they did during this year's legislative session. Among his caucus' legislative ideas are:

• A job creation tax credit to encourage small business owners to hire.
• State funding for a small business loan program.
• Giving Indiana contractors first crack at performing any public works contracts.
• Clawing back economic development incentives from businesses who fail to live up to their promises.
• A voucher program to allow low-income people to enroll their children in pre-school programs.
• Full-day kindergarten for every eligible child.
• Tax credits for child care expenses.
• A sales tax exemption for textbooks and school supplies

"Right to work for less", Bauer promises, will not be the only answer Hoosiers will be offered for their current economic woes.