Boehner the Job-Killing Hypocrite
Sorry to be away so often nowadays; my school schedule is killing me recently.
However, this has got to be worth something–John Boehner is being even more of a hypocritical ass than normal.
Boehner was a leading force behind the push to call Health Care Reform by the name “Job Killing Health Care Law,” claiming that the reform act would cause 1.6 million jobs to be lost. That, of course, was not true; the 1.6 million number was based upon a provision that was not part of the health care act, which the CBO says will have only a minimal impact on jobs. Boehner only doubled down, calling the reform “Job Crushing” and “Job Destroying.”
So what was Boehner’s next big idea? The GOP’s own bag of spending cuts. The cost in jobs? As many as a million people will lose their jobs under the GOP plan.
When Boehner was asked about the jobs lost, his response–albeit to a lower number than the 1 million that could potentially be lost–was callous: “So be it.”
Apparently, saving a billion here and a billion there was worth killing off at least hundreds of thousands of jobs.
But Boehner was not finished being a hypocrite. There’s a third leg to his recent actions which ties into this.
Boehner was trying to slip some pork back into the budget, a classic example of government waste: a jet engine that the Pentagon didn’t want but would bring money to Boehner’s district. The engine was seen as unnecessary and could have cost taxpayers as much as $3 billion.
So, let’s recap: Boehner falsely calls the Health Care Reform Act “Job Killing” whilst being cold-hearted about killing off enough jobs to send us back into a recession so he could save money that he would then try to waste as pork for his state.
That’s a pretty impressive week.
Yup, every $100,000 in spending is directly supporting one job somewhere.
Well, that’s theoretical. Actually what’s probably happening is pretty high vendor profit margins resulting in $400,000 resulting in two $60,000 jobs and $280,000 for the company doing the contracting.
That’s who beat Russ Feingold, some rich dude who had made a lot of money on government contracts for medical devices.
But regardless, what also happens when we cut gov’t spending is that money actually LEAVES a local economy.
Boehner’s going to see this first-hand if in fact Congress kills the 2nd F-35 engine.
“But it just so happens that a GE plant that develops the second engine employs 7,000 people in Evendale, Ohio, near Boehner’s district”
Yup. $450M/7000 is $64,000, a believable annual salary for GE in Ohio.
So if that $450M leaves Ohio’s economy, you can kiss all the jobs that the GE workers were supporting, and all the jobs that those jobs were supporting.
I don’t have a handle on the math here, but I suspect it all can boil down to about $30,000/job in the end. Ie assuming no leakage from fraud or graft or obscenely high profit margins being pocketed somewhere, every $1B spending cut results in 30,000 jobs lost.
This can’t work on the large level, though, since there is about $3T of federal spending, and that would mean the entire economy — 100 million jobs — is directly or indirectly dependent on the government.
But one must wonder where all that money is going. $3T is a heckuva lot of money.
This site:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2011_US.html
breaks it down to $500B for medicare, $910B for defense (!), ~$1T for social services, $200B/yr interest, $60B federal spending for civil & criminal justice.
We’re spending $300B/yr total on “protection” at all levels. That is $200/mo per worker.
On a per-worker basis all these numbers will drive you crazy, but I guess per-capita is misleading since the top 2% collect more than 20% of the income.
Point #1: RHOP (see point #3).
Point #2: Repubicans stand for only one thing – the ever greater concentration of wealth and power (to the benefit of their retainers).
Point #3: Republicans Hate Ordinary People.
One million jobs lost? So be it.
41,000 people, fellow American citizens mind you, dying every year because of lack of affordable health insurance that is available in every first world country, some second world countries and even a few third world countries – That’s okay too. I know, I know, some democrats are guilty too. Wealth has become so concentrated in this country that the wealthy, in addition to owning the Republican party, can afford to buy enough democrats, such as Obama, that they are never without a majority in politics.
Remember: RHOP.
See Point #1.
I don’t think Obama’s “bought” per se.
I think he has a tricky needle to thread to win reelection in 2012.
Basically he has to win Virginia, assuming he loses NC, IN, FL, and OH.
If he doesn’t hold VA then any loss in 8 other battleground states will lose the election.
Most people have a job now. Most people have insurance. Most people like paying low taxes. Most people are “low-information voters” who are easy to bamboozle.
Politicians, the media, the wealthy, etc. aren’t the problem.
The people are the problem, and they demonstrated that last November.
I almost respect the Republican position on this. They’re not really honest about the US being “broke” but I do understand why they want to curtail government spending, and their “starve the beast” plan, while devious, is at least understandable in its methods and its aims.
Not including social security, government is going to be spending $6T this year.
That is $54,000 per household. Ie. if this spending were evenly distributed, every household would have one government worker.
The deficit is $1.5T. If we can’t cut $900B/yr, we basically need to raise taxes $900B to bring things somewhat closer back into balance.
The top 2% collect $3.0T, so a 10% surtax on them would yield us $300B.
The next 18% collect another $6T, so 10% on them would yield us $600B.
There’s that $900B.
The only problem is it’s politically impossible to get these tax rises through Congress.
Obama’s tax-rise proposal in 2009 was reasonable but Congress refused to run with it, not wanting to see a repeat of 1994 happen to them (which it did anyway).