On Tuesday's All In on MSNBC, during a discussion of the federal budget and spending on poverty programs, host Chris Hayes suggesting reducing unemployment by having the government hire workers as he jokingly suggested having another census because unemployment dropped the last time census workers were hired.
After guest Tom Colocchio of Food Policy Action called for more "job training programs so they can actually get back to work," Hayes jumped in:
How about we just, you know, one of my favorite, we don't have this graph because I didn't think to prepare this for the show, but thre's this graph of the recovery, and there's this little part of the graph, okay, where the recovery, the jobs recovery ticks up very dramatically, and it's the census hiring, and then it goes back down after it. And I'm like, let's just have another census, like for the love of God, people.
As he was laughing, the suggestion of having the census again was presumably a joke, although the MSNBC most likely does support growing government to reduce unemployment.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, December 10, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:
TOM COLOCCHIO, FOOD POLICY ACTION: What I'm really concerned about here is it seems to me that we are no longer investing in our most precious commodity and that is people. When you have one-sixth of the population that can't actually participate in the American dream, something is wrong with our entire system. When we see 50 million Americans that are food insecure, this is just a canary in the coal mine.
CHRIS HAYES: Right.
COLOCCHIO: This portends that there are a lot of other structural problems right now-
HAYES: Yes.
COLOCCHIO: -and things that we need to address. And so I think this is just the beginning and unless we start addressing this, unless we start changing the conversation and talk about how we're going to invest in our future, invest in our children, send them to school with food in their bellies so they actually can learn, when we're talking about getting people of out of unemployment and get them job training programs so they can actually get back to work-
HAYES: How about we just, you know, one of my favorite, we don't have this graph because I didn't think to prepare this for the show, but there's this graph of the recovery, and there's this little part of the graph, okay, where the recovery, the jobs recovery ticks up very dramatically, and it's the census hiring, and then it goes back down after it. And I'm like, let's just have another census, like for the love of God, people.
NEERA TANDEN, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Now, see, what the poverty study that came out today shows is actually that the government is doing an effective job. What isn't working is the economy.
HAYES: Right, right, that's a great point. That's a really good point.
TANDEN: The economy isn't producing enough jobs to go up that scale. And that's why it's so vital that we pass a minimum wage. Should we have any cuts to food stamps? Absolutely not. But, we should not equate the two parties on the issue of food stamps-
HAYES: No, absolutely.
TANDEN: -or the minimum wage or other issues.
HAYES: No.
TANDEN: We should actually increase food stamps, I agree with that and we should demand a minimum wage increase, and that's an issue that we can go to the Republicans on and say, "Pass this bill." Democrats are almost united on that.