COLUMBUS, Ohio (CGE) - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey report finds that 55 percent of likely U.S. voters think President Obama’s proposed $3.7 trillion federal budget doesn't include enough spending cuts. They also don't think plans by House Republicans to cut government spending - a net of $61 billion in over the next seven months - go far enough either.
"So be it."
Yesterday, when Ohio congressman and U.S. House Speaker John A Boehner was asked how many jobs would be lost as a result of cuts proposed by his majority caucus, his response, according to the Washington Post was, "I do not."
Boehner, who said the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs since President Obama took office in January of 2009 [a figure that was immediately proven to be about 75 percent too high], told reporters that "if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it."
The reality for Ohio from speaker Boehner's "so be it" attitude is not insignificant. For Ohio, whose job slide has been underway for decades and whose new Republican Gov. John Kasich is fiddling fast as he tries to stem the tide of jobs that have gone belly-up or left for other states or other countries with the creation over the next six-months of a privatized job creation entity, another lost job only adds to the heavy lift ahead of state and business leaders.
Without factoring in Ohio's share of the loss of 650,000 government jobs, as calculated by Scott Lilly, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, the share of the 325,000 non-government jobs Lilly said would disappear as a secondary result of the former, as government workers travel less and buy less, could be a double-digit economic wallop for Buckeyes.
Simple calculations, using 2010 Census information, were used to arrive at a figure of 12,025 lost jobs for Ohio. Ohio's population of 11,536,504 represents about 3.7 percent of the U.S. Population of 310,830,966. Taking 3.7 percent of Lilly's 325,000 job loss figure results in a figure of 12,025. Even if this figure is off by 50 percent, the loss of thousands of non-government jobs in Ohio would deal a devastating blow to Gov. Kasich's plans to regain even a fraction of the 450,000 jobs lost just over the past four years.
Lilly responds
"That is not unreasonable in terms of calculating the secondary effects," Lilly responded to CGE in an email. He said the initial effects will be bigger as "Ohio will lose Head Start teachers, federal meat inspectors, sewer construction workers and jobs in numerous other areas as a direct result of the cuts."
"We are dealing with very rough numbers at this point because no one fully understands the contents of the funding resolution at this point," Lilly noted, adding that "After agency budget offices have had a few days to digest the numbers they will have a better notion of how they would handle the reductions and what steps in terms of layoffs and terminations would be necessary."
Boehner at odds with other Republicans
Boehner campaigned last fall on listening to the "will of the American people" who he said voted for Republicans because they want out of control spending in Washington stopped. What may turn out to be a wish he may not like if it comes true, members of Boehner's own party have proposed to do just that, and in a big way.
Another Ohio congressman, Jim Jordan of Urbana, serves as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a GOP group that sculpts the federal budget to comply with party policies. Jordan's group wants to slash $100 billion in federal spending.
Boehner is also fending off a hit from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who says the Pentagon should stop spending any more money on an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, made with the help of 7,000 workers in Evendale, a suburb of Cincinnati near Boehner's home district.
Boehner said continued spending on the jet engine will save money over the next 10 years. Gates is determined to shut down the program.
Millbank reported that Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) reminded GOP leaders that cutting the wasteful engine is "the right thing to do, and I think the American people sent that message loud and clear."
Whether Boehner gets his way on shutting down government jobs [dealing Ohio a job loss hit of maybe 12,000 or more jobs] or whether Gates gets his way on shutting down spending on the F-35 [dealing Ohio a loss of 7,000 jobs], Buckeyes stand to lose jobs at a time when its unemployment rate, still unacceptably high at 9.6 percent, has climbed down from 10.3 percent in July 2010.
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