Cutting Government at the Wrong Time

This debt deal has hurt the economy not helped it.   Growth comes about only when there is a market to sustain it.  As long as our government keeps downsizing, public sector jobs will continue to be lost, as well as buying power.  This is a formula for disaster. 

                                 

Can someone explain to me how cutting public sector jobs helps the economy?  How can laying people off be good for unemployment?   Unemployment is going up and local revenues are going down, so how does that help us out of the worst recession in the history of our country?

Republicans are engaged in fuzzy math again.  Their simplistic remedies of tax cuts plays well with the voters but make no sense.  Public sector jobs prime the pump in a time of high unemployment.  It is the remedy that sustained us during the Great Depression until the ultimate stimulus came in the form of World War II.  Again, our government spent money giving huge contracts to private sector companies for the war effort.  Ultimately, it was government spending that got us out of the Great Depression.  Did we all sleep through history class?

Why don’t we take a page out of the Clinton economic plan in the nineties?  Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy without a single vote from the Republicans.  He also cut government spending.  The result was the greatest economy in our history creating growth and surpluses.  We need to grow ourselves out of this recession not cut government expenditures.  

When you cut public sector jobs you hurt the middle class worker and small businesses.  If you own a small business, are you going to expand when hundreds of teachers, postal workers, and government workers are being laid off?  Small businesses, which are the greatest creator of jobs, are going to shut their doors because public sector workers keep the economy going.  They are the job creators, not corporations that outsource jobs to increase their profit margin.

It is going to have a negative ripple effect on tax revenues, too.  When you lay off thousands of public sector workers, they don’t buy houses, don’t dine out, and don’t take vacations which lower sales tax revenues.  Let’s not forget that all of those layoffs translate into more unemployment benefits that need to be paid out.   As a result, next year, state and local governments will be in greater deficit forcing even more public sector layoffs and our taxes will still increase!

Our goal as a nation should be to keep people working not laying people off.  If anything, we need more public sector jobs to employ the millions of young people out of work.  This is an opportunity to fix the problems in infrastructure, education, health care, and energy.  The private sector has demonstrated their unwillingness to invest in this country.  They would rather create jobs in other countries to increase their profit margin.  They are sitting on trillions of dollars and getting the job done with foreign workers.  Personally, I would rather have a tax increase and have all our sons and daughters working!   Wake up America!