How Republican sabotage is hampering the recovery (updated)

[ProSense]

First Rebublican obstruction in Congress: Senate Republicans Kill Rebuild America Act

For the third time in a month, Senate Republicans killed legislation which would have put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work. The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes needed to break their filibuster against the jobs-creating Rebuild America Act.

The legislation would have created jobs immediately by investing $50 billion to repair and rebuild the nation’s roads, rails and airports, establish a national infrastructure bank to fund a broad range of projects and asked millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share. It also would have created an infrastructure bank to fund future projects.

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Last week Republicans blocked the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, which would have created or protected nearly 400,000 education jobs while preventing the layoffs of thousands of police officers and firefighters. On Oct. 10, Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s American Job s Act.

Meanwhile, the Senate Republican response to the job crisis is a plan that centers on tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the rollback of essential federal regulations—including Wall Street reform—and the repeal of health care reform.

Their actions not only impede additional job creation, but also give Republican Governors and local officials cover for additional public-sector layoffs.

For example, Chris Christie:

August 2010: N.J. unemployment jumps from Christie budget cuts

February 2011: Democrats fight Gov. Christie's plan to privatize N.J. government functions

September 28: Republican Crowd At Christie Speech Cheers Laying Off Thousands Of Government Workers

Matthew Yglesias

I get hoarse repeating this, but I have yet to see conservatives really grapple with the fact that month after month we see a labor market that’s basically treading water primarily because government employment is shrinking rather than keeping pace with population growth. Had we had government employment growing along with the population, this would still be a weakish labor market recovery, but it would be a real recovery with the unemployment rate falling bit by bit each month. Such a scenario might even boost general optimism and spur a greater level of business demand and new housing construction. But even without the optimistic “multiplier” progressive story, simply the direct impact of government hiring would be a slow-but-steady recovery.

So what’s the conservative story about this? The conservative story about the Obama economy seems to be that an overweening state is holding the private sector back. But the reality is that the public sector is shrinking. This shrinkage is exactly what conservatives claim to believe will spark growth once they bring the era of Kenyan Anticolonialism to an end. But it’s already happening in a modest way, and has been happening for a year and a half, and it keeps not delivering any private sector magic.

Media Matters: As The Private Sector Adds Jobs, Budget Cuts Continue To Limit Economic Growth




As Yglesias points out, without the public sector layoffs, the recovery would have shown signs of real progress, including a falling unemployment rate.

Calculated Risk (today)

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Through the first ten months of 2011, the economy has added 1.256 million total non-farm jobs or just 125 thousand per month. This is a better pace of payroll job creation than last year, but the economy still has 6.47 million fewer payroll jobs than at the beginning of the 2007 recession. The economy has added 1.529 million private sector jobs this year, or about 153 thousand per month.

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Remember also that without Republicans sabotaging the economic recovery, the pace of job creation could have been improved beyond the 153,000 jobs per month.

GRAPHIC: A Timeline Of GOP Economic Sabotage

Updated to add this from Mike Konczal: What Would a Good Jobs Report Have Looked Like?

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First of all, there would have been job growth that gets us back to full employment instead of job growth that is slightly around the rate of population growth. There would be well over 150,000 jobs created a month, ideally above 200,000 — there’s a lot of catching up to do. The key indicator to watch is the employment-population ratio, which is the percentage of the workforce that has a job. As unemployment only indicates the number of people actively searching for a job, and many are dropping out of the labor force and giving up on finding a job, the unemployment rate tells us less and less. And if the population is growing faster than the number of jobs created, we are losing out. The employment-population ratio tells us the actual rate at which we are employing people. It is currently at 58.4 percent, the same it was in January 2011.

A tourniquet would have been applied to the bleeding of public sector jobs. This is the worst time to push government workers into the ranks of the unemployed. With slack capacity, a high number of unemployed people, and negative real interest rates, we can’t afford a war against government workers. It’s a war in which we’ve lost 250,000 government jobs since January, with 77,000 in the “local government education” category (in other words, public school teachers).

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What else would a good report include? Strong gains in wages and hours worked. This is something we’d see more of as the economy returned to full employment, but it is worth keeping an eye on. The lack of these gains is a good sign that there is a ton of slack in the economy — and that those who have been freaking out about runaway inflation got it exactly wrong.

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What we really need is a healthy economy. The way we get there is a fiscal stimulus by any means necessary, aggressive monetary policy, and putting the housing market in order. What are the chances we’ll see changes on any of these fronts?

One way to achieve the "well over 150,000 jobs created a month" is to end the public sector layoffs. The way to get to more than 200,000 jobs created per month is additional stimulus. Republicans are seeing to it that neither happens.

[ProSense]

1. No comment?

One would think that there is disappointment this isn't Obama's fault. Americans are seeing the Republicans for who they are: saboteurs.

[marlakay]

2. When you have polls that say if we are still

In a financial mess any republican wins over Obama, of course they won't lift a finger to change anything...

It will be no no no into the white house they hope...

[opihimoimoi]

3. Signs indicate President Obama is KILLING the GOPers with TRUTH

and exposure of the McConnell mantra of making Obama a 1 termer.

The GOP continues the Madness of destroying the Nation in order to destroy one man...

They will rue the day.

[ProSense]

4. McConnell

"McConnell mantra of making Obama a 1 termer."

...made that statement back in October 2010, but the obstruction has been ongoing since January 2009.

[opihimoimoi]

5. Yup... and now...we will watch their death spiral nx year