Last spring’s budget deal eliminated 370,000 jobs [New]
Remember last spring budget deal? Remember how Barack Obama pulled a fast-one on John Boehner and didn’t really cut anything? Well, Scott Lilly at the Center for American Progress says there are 370,000 reasons that the cuts weren’t harmless:
… Indeed, the magnitude of the job cuts in the budget legislation adopted last spring—as demonstrated by the committee’s listing of 250 spending cuts—is so great that it is difficult to keep track of the human dimension. For that reason, I have focused on three program areas which were singled out by this Congress for particularly deep reductions:
- Federal support for local law enforcement
- Environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons production facilities
- The Federal Buildings Fund of the General Services Administration
Estimates of the number of jobs directly lost by these cuts run upwards to 60,000. The jobs losses that are a direct result of those actions will have a secondary impact on a wide array of businesses ranging from automobile producers to local restaurants and dry cleaning establishments, causing the disappearance of a significant number of additional jobs.
Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses—but that would require many more pages and exhaust the patience of most readers. All of the various 250 program reductions in the FY 2011 continuing resolution probably eliminated more 370,000 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.
Download this report (pdf)
Download the introduction and summary (pdf)
Read this report in your web browser (Scribd)
What Do You Think?
One Response to 'Last spring’s budget deal eliminated 370,000 jobs'
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Emocrat [New]
Friday, 28 Oct, 2011 at 10:51 am
There you go again, TBH, adding more logs to the fire! Don’t you know that we have to shrink our way to prosperity? Only through poverty can we find riches!
[/snark]
Almost on a daily basis now, we see data that confirms what sane people all over the world knew all along: You can’t shrink your way to prosperity. And yet, the ruling elites are still busy doing their best impressions of Marie Antoinette. Or perhaps Vidkun Quisling, in the case of the Democratic Leadership.
On the bright side, if enough cops receive pink slips, perhaps that might help motivate them to join the 99%.