Democrats now have multiple expert sources pointing out that the GOP plan to slash discretionary spending by tens of billions of dollars will cost the economy hundreds of thousands of jobs. Ben Bernanke says 200,000 jobs, Mark Zandi says 700,000 jobs. Others say secondary effects will knock that number closer to a million.
But it’s not like Democrats are on the other side of that fight, arguing that we should maintain spending at its current level or increase it. They want to cut spending, too, by a smaller amount, in different areas — and that means any plan they propose will also cost jobs.
“That may happen,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer conceded at his weekly Capitol briefing with reporters. “Frankly, some administrations have cut jobs. The Clinton administration had a smaller number of jobs than his predecessor, and less jobs than his successor.”
At the moment, Republicans are proposing about $50 billion more in cuts than Democrats, so there would be fewer job losses under the Democratic plan. But unless they back away from the bipartisan consensus that federal spending ought to be cut quickly, this blunts their attacks on the GOP.
“The issue is not how many federal employees we have,” Hoyer said. “The issue is what do we want to do? What can we afford to do? What is a priority to do? And then who do we need to do it?”
