Three polls released in November found that about half of those surveyed believed that Republicans have sabotaged the economic recovery. That they would deliberately stall economic growth — a betrayal of the interests of their constituents — is a measure of how debased the Republican Party has become since the tea party seized control.
There have been improvements in the job market, despite their best efforts. Jon Terbush suggests the slight but steady uptick may help the president in the campaign next year:
Percentage of jobs killed by government regulations, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite Republican claims that government regulations are the main source of job growth stagnation, according to the report, in 2010 Q4, only 0.25 percent of “layoff events” were the result of regulation. In 2011 Q1, it was 0.4 percent. In 2011 Q2, it was down again to 0.3 percent.
The unemployed don’t know how they’ll pay the rent
And wage-earners wonder where their paycheck just went.
While economic stagnation
Keeps a grip on the nation,
Corporations’ profits are up a tidy 88 percent!
The U.S. Senate saved between 700,000 and 1 million American jobs today by defeating the House tea party’s budget bill which contained $61 billion in budget cuts:
The cuts would have plunged the economy into the second Republican-driven recession in two and a half years.
The House-passed budget bill (HR. 1) was voted down 44-56. Lawmakers voting against the measure included two Independents and 51 Democrats, as well as [Tea Party Caucus members] Jim DeMint (SC), Mike Lee (UT) and Rand Paul (KY).
The three tea party senators presumably voted against the bill because they felt the $61 billion in cuts were not sufficient. Sen. Paul recently called for $500 billion in cuts, a move so drastic it’s unlikely the U.S. economy would recover from it for decades.
A study released at the end of February from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics who also served as the chief economic adviser to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign in 2008, found that the tea party budget cuts would put around 700,000 people out of jobs.
Just days before Zandi’s report was released, a confidential Goldman Sachs analysis of the bill predicted it would slow growth by 2 percent, which would translate into the loss of at least 1 million jobs.
Analysis of the tea party’s budget bill by the Center for American Progress also found that the bill would lead to the loss of about 1 million jobs.
Based on these reports, it’s clear that had the tea party budget bill passed, the cuts would have plunged the economy into the second Republican-driven recession in two and a half years.
Number of new jobs added in February, dropping unemployment to 8.9%, and providing more evidence that the stimulus measures enacted by the Obama administration were effective.
The House tea party caucus put its dominance over Speaker John Boehner on display last week when it pushed him and his hapless leadership team to the edge of the political ledge on the issue of budget cuts.
Here’s the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis on Friday of the ramifications of the tea party cuts were they to be enacted:
After the House Appropriations Committee detailed $74 billion in cuts last Wednesday, a number of conservative members demanded $26 billion in additional cuts to make good on the “Pledge to America,” bringing the total level of cuts relative to President Obama’s FY 2011 budget request to $100 billion. A full $100 billion cut to discretionary spending would likely result in job losses on the order of 994,000, using OMB’s GDP projections (CBO’s projections are based on current law) and assuming a fiscal multiplier of 1.5.
The new GOP budget proposes cutting non-security discretionary spending by $81 billion relative to the president’s $478 billion request for 2011. Non-security discretionary cuts of this magnitude would likely result in job losses of just over 800,000. (2/15/2011)
But over the weekend, looking at the bill as passed, the Associated Press reported that it called for $60 billion in cuts, which, if so, would represent a significant defeat for the tea party caucus. Even at that level, the cuts will likely produce direct job losses of 650,000 in government layoffs, which would likely trigger to another 325,000 layoffs, mostly in the retail and service sectors — nearly 1 million jobs altogether — according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.
One of the Republicans’ most often-repeated “big lies” — the Goebbels-Rove tactic of repeating a falsehood over and over until it is perceived to be true or, as Rove put it, until a “new reality” has been created — is that the government cannot create jobs.
Boehner won control of the House last year by haranguing the president about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” now he says that if adding 200,000 federal employees to the unemployment rolls would please his tea partyist base, well, “so be it.”
This is, of course, demonstrably untrue. Just for starters, there are hundreds of thousands of contractors in aerospace, defense, transportation and elsewhere who owe their jobs to the federal government and no one else.
Notably, the federal government paid, and is still paying, the salaries of tens of thousands of employees of Halliburton and Blackwater in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the other end of the spectrum, the federal government contracts out nearly all the construction work on new roads, bridges, tunnels, harbors and the like. State and local governments do the same.
Beyond the contractors, the federal government also has direct employees — about 2.8 million of them. Federal employees use their salaries the same way everyone else does. They pay mortgages or rent and other bills. They buy groceries, clothing, appliances and electronics. They go out to restaurants and on vacation. They even pay taxes.
Unemployment figure for January, down nearly a full percentage point from November, the largest two-month drop since 1958. Expect Republicans to claim credit, while continuing to deride Obama’s successful stimulus measures.
Number of new unemployment claims submitted last week, making it two weeks in a row that new claims dropped. The figure needs to get to about 400,000 to declare a recovery but at its height during the past year, 500,000 claims were the norm. The incoming Republicans in the House will no doubt claim credit for the recovery already in progress.
Mike Barnicle’s debate with outgoing Arizona GOP-T Rep. John Shadegg on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has gotten attention because of the outrageous new Grover Norquistian talking point about unemployment benefits that Shadegg trotted out:
It wasn’t Shadegg’s audacious lying that was remarkable — you can see that 24/7 on Fox — it was his swagger, the near-giddiness with which he consigned 2 million unemployed Americans to the wolves at the same time that he was demanding tax breaks for people so wealthy they don’t need to work.
BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy. Immediate.
SHADEGG: No, they’re not. Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.
BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money, Congressman, because they have no money.
SHADEGG: Ah — ah — So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy. I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drive the economy.
BARNICLE: But if you spend money in a variety store —
SHADEGG: Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.
A little later, Barnicle followed up on unemployment benefits:
BARNICLE: Let’s go back to what you said about unemployment checks. Unemployment checks, people don’t spend that money?
SHADEGG: No. They will spend as little as they can because they’ll hold on to it as long as they can. In reality, they don’t create jobs. You still haven’t told me how unemployed people create jobs.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
Here’s the Economic Policy Institute’s 
