GOP Chief Steele on Infrastructure Spending: ‘That’s Not Creating Jobs!’

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele appeared on ABC News yesterday, and Daily Kos’ Jed Lewison caught him making a pretty strange argument against federal spending to improve the nation’s infrastructure.

When Steele’s counterpart, Democratic counterpart, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, described “small businesses all over Virginia that are doing infrastructure projects because of” the White House’s economic stimulus bill, the RNC chief fired back: “Government contract work — that’s not creating jobs!”

In fact, though the Obama administration uses a fairly shaky methodology for counting the jobs generated by transportation stimulus spending, both the transit industry and federal highway officials have found that infrastructure money is a reliable employment booster.

And Steele might want to rethink his belief that government contracting doesn’t amount to job creation given that Ronald Reagan, one of his personal heroes, presided over an expansion of the federal payroll.