"I'm for cutting costs where it makes sense. ... If the net effect is destroying thousands of good-paying jobs, then that's a different story. Cut the fat, yes, but when it gets to the bone, that's something else." Those were the words of Indiana Senator Evan Bayh in the context of arguing against placing any sort of tax on the medical device industry. Of course this statement is absurd. The most extreme forms of waste often involve good-paying jobs. For example, the pharmaceutical industry, the defense industry, and the financial industry all offer good-paying jobs to many people. They can do this because they take large amounts of money from the rest of the population. The fact that an industry has good-paying jobs is hardly evidence that it is not wasteful. Rather than ending the article this way, the Post should have presented the comments of anyone familiar with economics, who could have ridiculed Bayh, a senator who pretends to be a fiscal conservative.
--Dean Baker
