Republican Policies Would Be Worse For The Economy

A newsweek article from last week didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know. But it is a good read, and it dealt with Republican claims point by point.

Estimates Say Fewer Jobs, Larger Deficits if Republicans Were in Charge
Newsweek
Andrew Romano 
August 27, 2010

Nothing is more important to Republican politicians these days than jobs and the deficit—at least according to Republican politicians. As House Minority Leader John Boehner put it in a "major economic address" on Tuesday, President Obama is "doing everything possible to prevent jobs from being created" while refusing to do anything at all "about bringing down the deficits that threaten our economy." Elect Republicans in November, Boehner assured his audience, and we will put an end to this insanity.

There's only one problem with Boehner's message: so far, the things that Republicans have said they want to do won't actually boost employment or reduce deficits. In fact, much the opposite. By combing through a variety of studies and projections from nonpartisan economic sources, we here at Gaggle headquarters have found that if Republicans were in charge from January 2009 onward—and if they were now given carte blanche to enact the proposals they want to—the projected 2010–2020 deficits would be larger than they are under Obama, and fewer people would probably be employed.

The math is pretty straightforward. Let's start with the deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama's stimulus plan is projected to increase budget deficits over the next decade by $814 billion. That's a big number. But Republicans opposed the legislation refused to provide an alternative, and now insist that it's been a total failure. So let's be generous and subtract it from their side of the equation. The Obama deficit: $814 billion. The GOP deficit: $0.

Next up is health-care reform. Obama passed it; Republicans want to repeal it "lock, stock, and barrel." The reason, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained in July, is that "we all know that it's going to increase the deficit." Unfortunately for the GOP, though, nonpartisan experts tend to disagree. Just this Tuesday, for example, the CBO released a letter saying that Obama's health-care-reform legislation would "reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion over the next 10 years,” while repealing the law would generate "an increase in deficits ... of $455 billion ... over that [same] period." Factor those figures into the equation and the Obama deficit falls to $784 billion. The GOP deficit, meanwhile, rises to $455 billion. Getting warmer.

Read the rest here...