.@gop dick: Mitch McConnell seeks federal funding to save jobs at government contractor #p2 #tcot

OK to vote to eliminate medicare but he's ok to use federal funds to help avert Kentucky plant shutdown
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/19/977435/-Mitch-McConnell-seeks-federal-funding-to-save-jobs-at-government-contractor?detail=hide&via=blog_1

Mitch McConnell embraces Keynesian economics for Kentucky (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
 

You know, maybe Mitch McConnell wouldn't be facing this situation if he hadn't spent the last two and a half years savagely attacking the idea that public investment creates jobs:

McConnell asks DOE to help avert Kentucky plant shutdown

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell visited an Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday to put pressure on the Energy Department to save jobs in Kentucky.

The Republican leader pressed Energy Secretary Steven Chu to save a uranium enrichment facility in western Kentucky run by USEC Inc. that does contract work for the federal government. USEC is looking to expand its business with the agency through a $2 billion loan guarantee for a new facility in Piketon, Ohio, but its application stalled before the DOE.

The plant in Paducah, Ky., could potentially close down in the next year or so because of its overall operating expenses, taking its 1,200 jobs with it.

"We cannot afford to lose one more job, let alone 1,200," McConnell said.

As a Republican P.R. hack would point out if McConnell were a Democrat, the loan guarantees he is seeking work out to $1.7 million for each job that would be saved. That doesn't make his proposal a bad one; I don't know enough about the details to judge. But if McConnell hadn't spent the last two-plus years fighting every effort to stimulate economic growth through common-sense Keynesian economic policies, he wouldn't be in this spot.

Instead, he's spent nearly every waking hour saying stuff like this:

If government spending would stimulate the economy, we'd be in the middle of a boom.

And this:

The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on Sunday that his party will vigorously oppose the spending initiatives President Obama plans to include in his State of the Union address on Tuesday because "it's not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending."

Except, of course, in his back yard. Just not yours.