Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) accused his Republican colleagues in Washington on Sunday of blatant hypocrisy on the stimulus package -- railing against the jobs bill in public while posing for stimulus-related projects and ceremonies in their home districts.
Appearing on ABC's This Week, the moderate Republican frequent GOP scourge pointed to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in particular for arguing this past week that the stimulus bill hadn't produced a single "net" job gain.
"I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around, and pushing back on the stimulus money and saying, 'This doesn't create any new job,'" said Schwarzenegger. "And then they go out and do the photo ops, posing with the big check and they say: 'Isn't this great, look at the kind of money I've provided for the state and this is money to create jobs, and this has created 10,000 new jobs, this has created 20,000 news jobs, and all those kinds of things.' It doesn't match up."
It's hypocrisy, said host Terry Moran. "Exactly," Schwarzenegger replied.
"I don't want to beat up on my Republican colleagues but I think it is kind of politics rather than thinking about one thing, and this is: 'How do we support the president? How do we support him and everything we can in order to go and stimulate the economy back and think about the people and not the politics?'
"Anyone that says this hasn't created a job, they should talk to the 150,000 people getting jobs in California," he added, "from the private sector and also from the public sector."
Romney, it should be noted, has already been slapped on the wrist once for the stimulus-related statement he made during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. The Associated Press fact-checked the speech and found his "assertions lacked context at best and at worst were flat-out wrong."
