For the last two years, the GOP was wholly obsessed with the deficit and hammering the Democrats over unemployment and jobs. Now that they control the House, they have been preoccupied with redefining rape and a calculated assault on women's reproductive rights. Oh yeah, and the deficit. Sort of. When they're not busy wanting to cut things that would ostensibly increase the deficit, such as their attempt to gut the IRS' budget. If you follow the link, it states that the IRS returns approximately $10 for every $1 it spends in federal funding. Pretty good deal, unless you're a Republican, because this is a partisan issue since the IRS forces rich people to actually pay what they owe. Or something.
But the one thing that you don't hear anymore, really from either party, is about jobs or unemployment. There's a number of reasons for this - everyone in DC is a bunch of weathy, out of touch assholes; the stimulus wasn't large enough and the pussy Democrats completely ceded the messaging war to the GOP to the extent that the same pussy Democrats are terrified of proposing any further or similar legislation that might actually seek to address the jobs crisis. But one recent mention of jobs that I have found extremely interesting are the reports from Goldman Sachs, Moody's Analytics, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the current GOP budget proposals would be absolutely devastating on employment.
Goldman Sachs economic forecaster Alec Phillips said the GOP plan could slow economic growth by up to 2 percent. Even a compromise deal, with $25 billion in cuts could slow growth by 1 percent.
A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.
Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.
Ben Bernanke (and this is hilarious):
U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy thought he had an ally in Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the impact that Republican budget cuts will have on jobs.
McCarthy, of California, the third-ranking House Republican, said this week the spending cuts won’t cost the nation jobs, pointing to Bernanke for support. Within hours, Bernanke testified on Capitol Hill that the budget reductions may lead to the loss of 200,000 jobs.
The Fed chief said the House Republican plan to slash $61 billion from 2011 government spending could also subtract “a couple of tenths” of a percentage point from U.S. economic growth over several years.
So we have several different sources now all pointing to the same conclusion: the GOP's myopic slash-and-burn campaign on the budget is going to make an already lagging economy much, much worse. But what about Britain and Ireland? Their economies crashed harder and faster than ours did, and their austerity measures could serve as an important benchmark. Here's the luck of the Irish (via Atrios):
Unemployment is up to 13.8 percent (it was as low as 4.2 percent as recently as 2005); public spending has been savagely and repeatedly cut since 2008; the deficit has risen to 14.3 percent; and current predictions suggest that 100,000 people will emigrate in the next several years, from a population of 4.3 million. The bill from the struggling banks may, in the end, total upward of $135 billion 100 billion euros, in an economy with a G.D.P. of $220 billion 160 billion euros.And our friends across the pond:
For David Cameron in the spring of 2010, the crisis became an opportunity to cut the size and scope of government. In October, the new government unveiled its austerity measures, which called for cutting 500,000 public-sector jobs, slashing the deficit, hacking aid to local governments and eliminating middle-class entitlements. It also signaled that the Value Added Tax would rise from 17.5 percent to 20 percent come January 2011. The theory: Consumers and businesses would carry on with a stiff upper lip, and the global boom would boost demand for exports.
So how is that austerity thing working for the Brits? Not so great.
The U.K.'s economy didn't come out of recession until the fourth quarter of 2009, and grew only 1.7 percent between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010. Worse, the U.K. reported last week that its GDP fell .5 percent in the fourth quarter. The government blamed the decline on bad weather. But even if England had been atypically sunny in the quarter, the economy would "be showing a flattish picture."
But these things don't matter, because Goldman Sachs is lying, Zandi is a liberal (except for when he's working on McCain's presidential campaign), Bernanke is just making shit up, and Ireland and Britain are dirty socialist euro trash economies, and if Reagan were alive today, he would solve this in a heartbeat and make sure that draconian budget cuts trickled down all over the place, bitches.
But to sum up this whole point, Ezra Klein is entirely too gracious in making the following comment:
You could say, perhaps, that the GOP is taking a longer-range view: they're willing to lose jobs now to prevent a debt crisis later. But their efforts to repeal the health-care law will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, add more than $200 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, while their spending cuts would remove merely $64 billion. And they want to extend all the Bush tax cuts -- without offsets -- at a cost of $4 trillion or so to the deficit over 10 years. So it's hard to take their stated concern for the deficit seriously, either.
I'm not going to ask "where are the jobs?" The House Republicans have only been in office for a few months, and they don't control the whole of the government. What I do want to know is where is the policy that would create jobs?
There IS no policy that will creates jobs, and there WON'T be a policy that will create jobs. The Republicans do not give a shit about jobs. They are doing exactly what they set out to do upon regaining power in one chamber of power on Capitol Hill: pursue a wholly ideologically driven agenda that has no basis in reality and does nothing to solve the problems facing our country and the middle class, but does everything to serve their own interests and those of their corporate masters.
Ezra is partially right about one thing: the GOP is taking a long-range view, but it has absolutely nothing to do with preventing a debt crisis, and everything to do with ensuring that the economy remains firmly in the shitter come 2012. In about 6-8 months, the dialog will again turn to jobs and pointing the finger at Obama and the Democrats for not doing anything to turn the economy around. And when their budget cuts cause the nation to hemorrhage jobs and slow or reduce GDP, it will be because of Obama's government-takeover of everything, and how mean he has been to CEOs and banksters and hurt their fee-fees, and that his anti-business agenda has made business so scared and uncertain that no one has the confidence to invest in the economy.
This is not about budget cuts - this is about the next election.
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