It’s the jobs, stupid

One of Sen. Harry Reid's campaign bragging points (there aren't many) is that he twisted the arms of the various banks involved in financing the $8.6 billion CityCenter project on the Las Vegas Strip in the spring of 2009 to extend further credit to the venture after one of its developers -- and Sen. Reid's top campaign contributor -- MGM Mirage asked him to do so.

At the time, Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center and an expert on Senate ethics, told The Associated Press she didn't believe Sen. Reid broke any ethics rules, but said the senator (who declined to name the banks he called) should be transparent about the calls to avoid perceptions that he inappropriately pressured bankers.

Asked if she, as a senator with regulatory power over financial institutions, would have made such a call, GOP candidate Sharron Angle recently said on a local radio station, "No, I would not. You know the reason is because he may have saved jobs in CityCenter, but he actually cost jobs in other parts of the city. ... The issue here becomes bailouts, right? And stimulus. We want something that is not going to bail out and stimulate, what we want is deregulate, lower taxes, give businesses some breathing room to do what they do best, which is create jobs. And just shuffling these, if you will, the deck chairs on the Titanic is not going to solve the problem. ... What we really need is real jobs, permanent, full-time jobs with a future. And that can only be provided by the private sector, government does not provide jobs."

The Reid campaign has criticized that statement, calling it both "incoherent" and "unbelievable" -- and a Reid campaign ad hammering Ms. Angle implies she said she would do nothing as a U.S. senator to try to save local jobs.

But Sen. Reid and his party have been in charge of Congress for three-and-a-half years -- the entire duration of the current economic downturn. If Sen. Reid disagrees that it's the job of the private sector to create jobs, if he still believes, after nearly three years of failure, that the answer is instead to tax the heck out of whatever struggling businesses are still standing in order to pour more "stimulus" cash into boondoggles favored by his backers, the unions and the eco-extremists, then he must take credit for the results.

And what are the results?

Nevadans learned Monday that the state's unemployment rate set a new record in June, hitting 14.2 percent statewide with 193,300 Nevadans officially out of work and stiil looking for a job. The Southern Nevada rate jumped from 14.1 percent to 14.5 percent.

Add in discouraged workers and those who've lost their homes and jobs and simply walked away, and you could probably double those numbers. Worse, total employment decreased by 1,400 jobs, in a month that's usually strong.

Looking past the half-truths in the Reid "job" ads, Ms. Angle is correct: The government doesn't create jobs, the private sector does. Harry Reid now leads Barack Obama's all-out assault on that very same private sector -- and yet gropes about like a toddler in the dark when trying to explain why the economy continues to tank.

Ms. Angle, on the other hand, offers a lower tax, free market approach, mirroring the prespription Ronald Reagan imposed early in his presidency which eventually triggered one of the greatest periods of growth the country has ever seen.

If Mr. Reid doesn't like Ms. Angle's proposals, we'd be tempted to ask what the Reid-Obama plan is to bring back jobs, tourists, prosperity and cash-flow to Southern Nevada.

Unfortunately, we're afraid we may already have seen it.