Get ready for the new Democratic talking point on the ’stimulus’ bill. Here’s Barney Frank on Meet the Press yesterday:

Secondly, they [Republicans] talk about this wasteful spending. Let me talk about it. I’ll be flying out of here this afternoon to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they’re about to lay off cops and firefighters. That’s the wasteful spending that my colleagues are talking about, money to go to the states to stop from laying off cops and firefighters.

All and all, Frank made reference to laying off COPS AND FIREFIGHTERS five times on the show. Let’s look at the situation in New Bedford. Here’s what’s really going on, according to the local paper:

Unless a majority of workers in each union agree to voluntary cuts when they vote next week, hundreds of municipal workers — as many as 300 or more — face layoffs. Their ranks include dozens of police and firefighters. …
Specifically, Mayor Scott W. Lang has called for union and non-union workers to give up 10 percent of their base pay and 3½ days of holiday pay and has asked some unions to give the city more flexibility on work rules. The mayor made the request a week ago after learning that Gov. Deval Patrick planned to cut local aid for the current fiscal year statewide by $128 million, which translates to a cut of about $2.8 million for New Bedford.
Gov. Patrick also said he was contemplating a $375 million cut in local aid for the next fiscal year starting July 1, which could mean up to another $8.2 million loss for New Bedford.

Even if New Bedord does end up facing faces a second round of cuts, 11 million from the city budget over the next year may sound like a lot, but it’s not relative to the city’s overall budget. Here’s a letter to the editor from the local paper:

In response to Brian Boyd’s Jan. 29 article titled, “Officials warn of layoffs”: Do our local officials understand that $2.8 million in cutbacks actually represent only 2 percent of the $285 million city budget, spread over the remainder of the fiscal year? Does Jane Gonsalves understand the financial numbers, when she terms these cuts as “devastating”?
If our city officials cannot find 2 percent of waste or unnecessary spending to cut out of the city budget, our problems are deeper than spending cuts. Maybe the real problem is incompetence within our city administration. This year’s property tax increase should cover that 2 percent several times over!
The economy is floundering. Are city officials out demanding contract renegotiation with all city suppliers? Are all department heads being challenged to take a measly 2 percent out of their budgets for the remainder of the year? Are any of them being so challenged?
Let’s not allow our city officials to buffalo us into thinking this situation is worse than it actually is!

Whatever budget and union problems need to be sorted out by New Bedford, it seems the city could do a lot before they have to resort to laying off cops and firemen. And unless Frank and other Democrats start providing credible evidence that a) there’s no belt-tightening alternative to cops and firefighters being laid off around the country and b) this will somehow be prevented that by the so-called ’stimulus’ bill, this should be viewed as nothing more than a scare tactic.