When Voting Against Job Creation Just Isn’t Enough
As we’ve been documenting, Republicans keep voting against millions of American jobs. But it doesn’t stop there! The bills they’ve managed to get enacted — namely spending cuts through taking the entire government hostage and threatening to shut it down — have actually killed 370,000 jobs according to a new report from Scott Lilly, a longtime Capitol Hill staffer and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Here’s the rundown, via ThinkProgress’ Travis Waldron:
Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.
And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:
“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”
According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.
Survey Says: Americans Like Obama’s Economic Policies
Polls have shown strong support for the elements of president’s jobs plan. We received even more confirmation of this sentiment from an unlikely source — a Fox News poll. ThinkProgress has the details:
A majority of Americans think President Obama’s economic policies would have positive results if they were implemented, according to a new Fox News poll released Thursday. 52 percent of respondents said Obama’s “ideas are good, but he hasn’t been able to get them implemented,” against 37 percent who think his “ideas are bad, and too many of them are being implemented.” In past polls,substantial majorities have supported the main proposals in Obama’s jobs plan, while others show continued frustration with Congressional Republicans for repeatedly blocking Obama’s proposals.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
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Photo Friday: Mitt Romney’s $10 Million ‘Lakeside Getaway’ in New Hampshire
CBS News posted some snaps of Mitt Romney’s lakeside home in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
The main house:
The stable house:
The boat house:
In other New Hampshire-related Romney news, Granite State Progress, a local progressive group, today called on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.