Republican Governors Who Slashed Spending and Gave Away Big Corporate Tax Cuts Lost The Most Jobs
Republican governors have touted spending cuts as both fiscally responsible, and economically prudent. But a new analysis casts doubt on that narrative.The economy began to tank and unemployment begin to rise during the Bush administration. Obama stabilized the economy and business begin to make pre-recession profits ( pretty good for a supposed socialist). Along come this new crop of crazy tea nut right-wing govenors who slashed public sector jobs and gave away huge tax breaks to coporations - many of which were not even paying taxes after all the deductions and loopholes. Then they cut public sector jobs. Those people who had jobs were buying stuff like toothpaste, shoes, TVs and cars. Public workers helped the economy in ways the corporate plutocracy that Republicans love would not. The corporations simply put their new windfall of money under their mattress.
In recent months, Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) both claimed their budgets, heavy on the spending cuts, would pave the way for job growth in their states, as Think Progress notes.
Yet according to research performed by Think Progress, it seems states that cut the most funding lost the most jobs. And according to the site, in fact, the country is split pretty evenly between the 24 states that cut spending between 2007 and 2010, and the 25 that expanded government outlays.
On average, states that increased spending performed significantly better than cost-cutting states, with their unemployment rates actually dropping by 0.2 percent (as opposed to 1 percent increase in cost-cutting states), private-sector employment increasing by 1.4 percent (as opposed to a 2.1 percent loss) and 0.5 percent "real economic growth" since the start of the recession (as compared to a 2.9 percent economic contraction relative to the national economic trend).
Says Think Progress:
This graph (top) shows that state spending is not just about jobs for public service workers, but also has far reaching consequences for private businesses and their workers... States that cut spending are seeing significantly more job losses in the private sector than states maintaining or increasing spending levels. For every 10 percent cut in state spending, state economies lost 1.6 percent of their private-sector jobs.
The analysis comes as Congressional Republicans have demanded trillion dollar budget cuts as the price for their votes to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans have also balked at the notion of raising taxes as part of any debt ceiling agreement.
