[Hoot Gibson]

Look at the chart, there is the same number of people in the private sector that there was in '09. How can you say the public sector is losing jobs because there isn't enough private jobs to keep them going when there are the same or slightly more private jobs now? I thought you wanted smaller government?

Obama took office in the depths of a deep recession - nobody disputes that fact. State governments took a huge hit in tax revenues during that period and most of them did all that they could to avoid laying off employees. In other words, in early 2009, there were not enough jobs in the private sector to support the number of state and local government employees that were in place and there still is not. That is why California currently has an "unexpectedly" high budget deficit of $16 billion and its left wing governor is seeking another huge increase in taxes to avoid spending cuts.

I saw the extent of belt tightening that Haley Barbour's administration did first hand when I worked during 2009 near his office. Employees were advised to do everything possible to reduce paper usage and cartons of paper were placed in supervisors' offices to discourage paper use. Unpaid furloughs had begun when I left Mississippi in 2010 in an unsuccessful effort to avoid layoffs. Many of the state employees with whom I worked, some of them who had been state employees for 20 years or more, now work in the private sector but there are not enough private sector jobs to absorb all of the laid off state employees.

I do want smaller government, at all levels. Unfortunately, the reaction of politicians to a weak economy is almost always to raise taxes, which puts a damper on the expansion of the private sector. California, Illinois, New York, and Michigan are prime examples of states that have reacted to loss of manufacturing jobs by raising taxes, only to see more job losses, as companies flock to states with lower taxes - mostly in the south.