GOP spending plan would cost 700,000 jobs, new report says

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

The report, by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.

Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.

His report comes on the heels of a similar analysis last week by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which predicted that the Republican spending cuts would cause even greater damage to the economy, slowing growth by as much as 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of this year.

Republicans have dismissed both reports, calling them the product of the same flawed economic thinking that produced President Obama’s $814 billion stimulus package -- a bill that Democrats argued would keep unemployment below 8 percent. In fact, the unemployment rate has hovered at or above 9 percent for nearly two years.

On Monday, Republican aides were particularly critical of Zandi, a registered Democrat who advised Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign but became one of the most influential advocates for government economic stimulus a year later.

“The fact that a relentless cheerleader for the failed ‘stimulus’ - which the Democrats who run Washington claimed would keep unemployment below eight percent - refuses to understand that ending the spending binge will help the private sector create jobs is sad, but not surprising,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

Republican leaders frequently claim that cutting government spending will create jobs by removing the fear of higher taxes from the minds of the nation’s business owners and entrepreneurs.

“There is more money sitting on the sidelines than there has been in the last 50 years,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the number three Republican in the House, told reporters last week. Freeing business to invest that cash would produce “stronger stimulus” than anything government could do, McCarthy said. “That is a philosophy we know that would work.”

So far, the Republicans have been unable to marshal an independent analysis that reflects that view. But on Monday they did offer the opinion of Stanford University economist John B. Taylor, who argued that the macroeconomic models employed by Zandi, Goldman Sachs and many other independent forecasters -- including the Congressional Budget Office -- overstate the economic impact of government spending and ignore the boost to confidence that would come from reining it in.

Taylor also noted that CBO’s analysis of the GOP budget bill shows that it would only cut spending by $19 billion over the next seven months, with the remainder of the $61 billion in cuts taking effect in future fiscal years.