The road to White House under construction

It’s safe to say that if the unemployment rate remains high and the economy remains weak, Republicans will have a better chance of taking the White House in November.

The job report Feb. 3 probably upset more than a few conservatives.

In light of the fact that we’re now in the best economy since before President Barack Obama took office, Republicans were quick to disparage the news.

“Our economy still isn’t creating jobs the way it should be and that’s why we need a new approach,” House Speaker John Boehner said.

So, Republicans took action. To kill jobs.

The first thing they did, as usual, was to target the giant amorphous blob of the vaguely threatening “national deficit.”

The focus on the deficit is silly to begin with, but the solution is dangerous. It’s never to increase revenue. It’s solely “slash and burn.”

A group of GOP senators, in an effort to cut the deficit while avoiding defense cuts, introduced legislation that “targets federal workers, reducing their ranks and freezing their salaries.”

The stated goal is to “reduce the workforce by 5 percent.” Another bill in the House would reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent.

These cuts might get some conservatives drooling, but they’re hardly a good idea.

The reason is simple: Along with a few other factors (the mortgage crisis and the European economic situation), the action holding our economy back has been government cuts.

This may come as a shock, but the private sector has added jobs for 23 straight months. That amounts to around 3.7 million jobs. The federal government, however, due to blown-up concerns about the debt, has been hemorrhaging jobs.

Over 100,000 federal jobs were lost between January and September 2011. The American government has cut over half a million jobs since the recession began.

Obama attempted to pass legislation preventing teachers, firefighters and police officers from being laid off, but the GOP wouldn’t pass it.

In fairness, the Republican bill was an attempt to replace the automatic government cuts due to the congressional super committee’s failure to fix the debt problem last November.

Those cuts will certainly result in lost jobs.

The right way to go forward would be to increase or maintain federal job levels, not to start with a goal of cutting them.

I mentioned federal cuts were the first thing the GOP targeted following Friday’s jobs report.

I’ll let the New York Times enlighten us on the second thing:“Congressional Republicans criticized the Federal Reserve on Thursday for working to reduce unemployment and revive the housing market rather than maintaining a single-minded focus on inflation.”

In other words, the GOP is shouting, “Bad Bernanke! Bad! Sit! Stop fueling asset bubbles and destabilizing prices!”

I know Republicans want to get back into the White House. But to get there, they’re placing American jobs on the sacrificial altar.

­— shlumorg@indiana.edu