In my nine years of legislative battles, political party representation has changed, but sadly, the debates have changed very little. Political operatives on all sides often seem more interested in satisfying the basest interests of their constituencies than truly helping them. Their strategy for retaining their positions includes repeating tiresome rhetoric designed to perpetuate the "us against them" mentality. They stake out hard positions and pontificate in lavish offices and hotel ballrooms. In the end, it is the little guy who is always left in the cold.

There is perhaps no clearer example of this than the debate over workers' compensation reform.

Here are the arguments: If you are in business, your rates are going up because of a few bad workers who cheat and use trial attorneys to exploit the system. If you are a union boss, your line is that those rat employers run sweatshops. When our wage slave brothers get maimed, on or off the job, we need a system to heal them and feed their children.

Cognitive dissonance describes the phenomenon when two people witnessing the same event or statement arrive at completely opposite conclusions.

Is the media bias generally liberal or conservative? I have friends who will passionately argue either side.

It is completely human to attempt to compartmentalize information like this. If in my working class upbringing I saw workers mistreated, I might think employers are mean. If my contemporaries are small business owners who struggle daily, working long hours only to take home less money at the end of the year than their employees, I would be incensed at the abusers of the system.

As Missouri leads the nation with 77,000 job losses, more than double the per capita losses of No. 2 Ohio, it is time we move above the hyperbole. Workers' compensation reform is purely and simply about job creation.

In a strange twist, I recently hosted in my office Ken Dearing, President of the Hazelwood Plant UAW and a couple of his workers. We were strategizing passage of the "Ford bill," working together on a bill about saving 2600 good jobs for good people. At my door there appears a machinist union boss and about a dozen angry members of his union. I invited them to join us. They had just come from one of those hotel ballroom sessions where the bosses, joined by the Governor, whipped them into a frenzy about the evil intentions of my bill. They were furious that I had such distain for good people as evident in my bill. The good people from the UAW did not see me that way. The union bosses looked foolish.

For Ford, and for any other employer to stay in Missouri, it simply must make economic sense. This is the law; the law of economics. When workers' compensation costs are too high, this cost will weigh in as a factor when Ford or any other business considers relocating.

As we quibble over who cares the most about injured workers and their jobs, employers are leaving our state. When employers leave for greener pastures it is those workers again, who are literally left in the cold.

I will continue fighting for workers' compensation reform because I believe workers would prefer job opportunities to the ability to continue to being used by phonebook back cover lawyers to exploit our system.

Sen. John Loudon, R-West St. Louis County, is chairman of the Senate Small Business, Insurance, and Industrial Relations Committee. He is serving as the Senate sponsor of House Bill 321, which would reform Missouri's workers' compensation laws.