Sam Graves goes to bed wearing an apron. As the congressman drifts to sleep, he calculates the sales tax on dry goods. He wakes to the sound of the shop-door bell.
Or at least that's the impression he likes to make. The Republican frequently invokes Main Street in his "Straight Talk With Sam" newsletters. In Graves' mind, Congress needs to "invest" in Main Street (October 20) and "focus on" Main Street (December 8). Those tricky Wall Street speculators? Better not move their debts to Main Street (September 29).
When he's not scolding his fellow lawmakers for paying insufficient attention to Floyd the Barber and Lem's Grocery, Graves likes to drop a little statistical knowledge. In the past year, eight of his newsletters have claimed that small businesses create seven out of 10 new jobs.
It's a pleasing notion, especially in today's troubled economy. Lehman Brothers may have disappeared into the suck, but we still have Smoky's Western Store.
Alas, small businesses do not create seven out of 10 jobs. Never have. The stat was discredited more than 15 years ago.
Politicians use metaphors and dispense faulty information as a matter of course. But Graves goes beyond redundancy and myth. Behind the flag-draped storefront lurks a right-wing agenda that even his northwest Missouri constituents may not find all that appealing.
As though suffering from loss of short-term memory, Graves stated, in his three most recent newsletters, that small businesses create seven out of 10 new jobs. On December 8, Graves quoted the stat while criticizing "billion dollar bailouts of failed corporations." Dude, there's a Ford plant in your district!
On December 15, Graves blasted "all the red tape and burdensome regulations" that the federal government places on small business. Graves didn't describe these regulations in any detail. He did, however, refer to the "red tape" as unnecessary — twice.
On January 5, Graves extolled the virtues of small business while announcing that he will serve as the ranking member of the House Committee on Small Business. "As the creator of 7 out of every 10 jobs in America, it will be small business that will help lead our economic recovery," he wrote. Fightin' Sam promised to ensure that small business had access to capital — a somewhat curious claim to make, considering that Graves voted against the $700 billion injection into the banking system.
Graves promotes free markets. So it's ironic that one of the economists who doubts small business's job-producing capabilities is Milton Friedman, the Leonardo da Vinci of free-market economic theory. Friedman doubted the statistical underpinnings of the claim in a 1992 essay titled "Do Old Fallacies Ever Die?"
A year later, three young academics crunched U.S. Census data and determined that small firms weren't the prosperity machines they were cracked up to be because workers at large firms were less likely to lose their jobs. (A new job, after all, isn't much good if it disappears.) David Hirschberg, who had worked as a statistician at the U.S. Small Business Administration, said the small-business numbers were a "hoax." In his 1999 book, The Job-Generation Controversy: The Economic Myth of Small Business, Hirschberg equates the small-business myth proponent with a racetrack bettor who wagers $80, collects $65 and declares a profit.
Politicians of every stripe pledge their allegiance to small business. But what does it mean to join hands at the fruit stand with Mom and Pop?
For Graves, small-business advocacy often means pain for workers and the environment. He voted to weaken the Endangered Species Act (2005), reject an increase in the minimum wage (2007) and deny victims of sex discrimination additional remedies (2008).
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I live in Clay County and voted for Sam Graves in the last election. He was one of the few who had the courage to vote against the massive government bailout, which, as reported in today's NYT, has resulting in companies spending bailout money to hire lobbyists, to lobby for more bailout money! I think he's a great Congressman, and so do his constituents. He crushed Kay Barnes 60% to 37% in the last election.
I live in Clay County and voted for Sam Graves in the last election. He was one of the few who had the courage to vote against the massive government bailout, which, as reported in today's NYT, has resulting in companies spending bailout money to hire lobbyists, to lobby for more bailout money! I think he's a great Congressman, and so do his constituents. He crushed Kay Barnes 60% to 37% in the last election.
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