I spent some time this week being physically ill over the front page, above the fold love letter in the Zero celebrating Oregon’s cut of the federal stimulus money. The inescapable conclusion? Oregon Democrats (and Democrats in general) have demonstrated one thing clearly: They love welfare more than free markets. The story went something like this: Isn’t it great that we have one billion dollars for “job creation?” We’ll spend the money to hire more permanent state workers to—wait for it—give out more welfare! We’re now considering it as some sort of victory to use what is the equivalent of welfare money to hire people to Give. Out. Welfare.

The story tells of this nice man, Jason Pruett, 30, who moved to Oregon in August of last year and hadn’t found a job yet. He and his fiancee, who moved from Hawaii, are living with his mother. He felt he needed to to contribute to his mother’s household so he applied for food stamps,

“It was the last thing I wanted to do,” says Pruett, 30, who has a new bachelor’s degree and owes $30,000 in student loans.”

But–and you’ve got to appreciate the irony–state workers cost so much money what, with the PERS, health care and everything, that some workers have been furloughed. But Eureka! the stimulus money allows the state to hire more permanent workers to give out welfare!

To handle the workload, the agency is drawing upon other state and federal accounts to hire hundreds of employees even as Oregon’s state budget troubles require public workers to take unpaid furlough days.

The unions running this state haven’t made a peep about this. Union bosses accept that this will increase their dues paying members and give the state an even larger permanent work force. The Democrats, lead by former union lawyer Ted Kulongoski (who’s initial campaign office was underwritten by the unions) hasn’t said ‘boo’ about increasing the permanent government work force. Kulongoski has overseen a boom of government employee hires since he made a deal with the unions to hire more employees and give their leaders top positions in the governor’s office in exchange for their eventual endorsement in his second run for office (at first unions gave their endorsement to primary challenger, Jim Hill).

But here’s why I bring up this whole thing. Oregon legislative democrats voted to increase job killing taxes and fees by $2 billion in the last legislative session. Two independent economic studies say that, conservatively, this will kill 70,000 jobs. With an overall unemployment of 12.2% and even higher in many Oregon counties (here), state D’s could have gone a long way toward gaining credibility on the jobs issue by refusing to go along with these taxes and fees which would, I repeat, kill jobs .
Of course, any credibility on the jobs issue was severely damaged when it was revealed that the state “stimulus” “jobs” program created about 220 jobs at a cost of $225 million (including debt service). (here and here)

One thing you can predict: when the “stimulus” money runs out in January 2011 and we can’t afford to pay the huge costs of these employees, we’ll have to cut them. If you listen closely, you can hear the howls of protest from the unions and union democrats now.