Fox Business panel dismisses economic damage from the shutdown: “Who needs the federal government?”

James Freeman: “You look at this job creation -- a lot of Americans are going to be saying, 'Hey can we have another one?'”

From the February 1 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co.:

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STUART VARNEY (HOST): Let's bring in James Freeman. He's with The Wall Street Journal. Now, talk to me about small business because you've got a column on that in the Journal

JAMES FREEMAN (ASST. EDITOR, WALL STREET JOURNAL): Yeah, that's right. Yesterday, we got the NFIB -- National Federation of Independent Business -- report. So these are small firms and looking at their hiring, they actually ramped up more job creation in January than in December, which, of course, was a great month for job creation as well. We're now seeing in this national report across the whole economy, blowing away expectations, and I think it's -- it's something of a reality check, not just for the secular stagnation crowd that likes to say we can't grow as fast as we used to and we're already at full employment; we can't create any more jobs. but also a lot of peers in our industry have been writing for the last month and a half about how devastating to the economy a partial government shutdown is. I think, you look at this job creation -- a lot of Americans are going to be saying, 'Hey can we have another one?'

VARNEY: Well, I like to hear that -- 

FREEMAN: It's fantastic. And you mention all of the reasons it's great in terms of wages going up, jobs going up. The prime-age working force, 25 to 54, those people who have been on the sidelines -- they're not retired, they've been just discouraged -- coming back into the market. We're back almost to the pre-financial crisis, pre-Obama levels of people in their prime working years in the work force. 

VARNEY: Quick question to John Lonski, economist, The Wall Street Journal people surveyed economist who said in this the first quarter -- and we're in first quarter -- we'd only grow the economy 1.8 percent. How does that stack up against 300,000 new jobs?

JOHN LONSKI (CHIEF CAPITAL MARKETS ECONOMIST, MOODY): The January employment report has suggested that this forecast is wrong, that it's too low, and we might actually have growth in excess of 2 percent for the first quarter. As Jim said, who needs the federal government? Let's not forget: It's only a partial federal government shutdown, too, not a total shutdown.

VARNEY: That'll ruffle some feathers: Let's have another shutdown. 

Previously:

Fox's Stuart Varney claims people “in the 1 percent” like himself are taxed more under Trump

Fox host Stuart Varney calls for the CIA to “ease” Nicolás Maduro out of power in Venezuela

Fox Business host: Elizabeth Warren's proposal to tax the super wealthy “smashes the whole idea of a person's dream” that they can become rich