In response to the Democratic economic stimulus package that passed through the House two nights ago, the GOP has proposed their own stimulus package–one they say will create 6 million jobs, more than twice the amount of jobs Obama’s plan would create.
Of course, that’s not exactly true:
But where did the Republicans get that number? By drawing some fuzzy conclusions from a 2007 paper by Dr. Christina Romer, chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
[…]
[T]he Romer analysis used by the GOP (linked to in the third paragraph of this page) never examined the effects of tax cuts on a deflationary economy — it looked at the effects of tax increases on the economy as a whole and found a negative effect of 2.2% – 3% on GDP.
The Republican analysis simply flipped those numbers to positive and applied them to the GOP-backed tax cuts then multiplied the result by a broad job creation estimate used in a recent paper from Romer and Jared Bernstein
In other words, the GOP used a nonsensical mish-mash of formulas and calculations to get a job creation figure that has no basis in economics, mathematics or reality.
Oh, and then there’s this:
According to Dems on the House Ways and Means Committee who have crunched the numbers, the GOP plan, which would reduce income taxes across the board, would as a result shove millions over on to the Alternative Income Tax rate, which would be higher for them.
That’s right–the GOP plan, designed to be a massive package of tax cuts, would actually raise taxes for millions of working Americans. That‘s how shoddy and hastily-put-together their stimulus plan is.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–the Republican Party isn’t a serious political party anymore.
