Sequestration Will Prevent Creation Of Up To 1.6 Million Jobs In Next Year, CBO Concludes

[onehandle]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- As many as 1.6 million new jobs could be added to the U.S. economy if Congress simply canceled the budget cuts implemented due to sequestration from Aug. 1, 2013, to the end of September 2014, a new non-partisan study has concluded.

The study, which was compiled by the Congressional Budget Office at the behest of House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), looked at the practical impacts of repealing sequestration from now through the end of fiscal year 2014.

Not everything was positive. Suspending sequestration would cost the government $14 billion in fiscal year 2013 and $90 billion in fiscal year 2014. And that additional debt, the CBO concluded, could "diminish policymakers’ ability to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected future challenges." It could heighten borrowing costs for the government down the road.

But sequestration has also had a negative effect on the nation's unemployment situation, the study concluded. And a year-long vacation from the policy -- which calls for $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years -- could result in a nice economic jolt.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/sequestration-jobs_n_3654008.html

[deutsey]

1. Austerity is working

Not to serve our interests, of course, but it was never intended to do that.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. Exactly!

[Botany]

2. "They" want to hurt the American people for electing a black man as President.

Why would anybody ever vote for a republican?

[valerief]

3. MUST.STARVE.SOCIAL.SECURITY. nt

[OnlinePoker]

4. Cost to the taxpayer is $65000 per job for the year and a half.

Add on that another $1300 per job for servicing the extra debt at 2% would bring it to $66500 per job. How much of that do you think would actually make it to the workers and not stay in the hands of the company owners?

[Turbineguy]

5. So it's working then.

Everybody who hates America: be sure to vote for republicans!

[Javaman]

6. And in will step a repuke corp to take over the jobs that were sequestered

and offer those same jobs back to those same laid off workers at half the pay.

this is a kind of venture capital type scam.

instead of instituting a hostile buy out, the repukes let their inaction do the work for them.

I'm waiting for the day when the Presidential inauguration is sponsored by pepsi.

[FloriTexan]

8. Yes, hubby's been in this viscious cycle for a few years now...

and he just got laid off again. Because he has to work and he has to take offers that are so much less than his last pay check to get unemployment benefits, he has essentially taken a $10,000 year cut in pay. This time even his unemployment benefits dropped. It isn't stopping. What is someone supposed to do. Businesses are not hiring people who don't already have a job, when they do they pay them less. Every job he finds is "temp-to-perm" which essentially means "we are really never going to hire you." So you are working for less pay, no benefits, no paid time off.

The same people who scream "get a job, Loser!" are the same people who won't hire the unemployed or pay fair wages. They force people out of the workforce by using background checks when they aren't needed, which affects people who have turned their lives around and the same for the damn credit checks they run. They are forcing people to be poor and rely on government assistance.

I mean when does it end. Its so depressing.

[jtuck004]

11. It probably won't end in our lifetime.

Certainly not in this country. If you were a bank you would be getting some of the $85 billion a month we are paying them or an investor who is buying up properties to rent to people with crappy jobs with those funds you might be doing ok.(Though, in my experience, being a landlord sucks). But for many their only choices are austerity or excuses, and inequality continues to take resources out of the public trust.

Those who can figure out that we are on our own may be in a better position to deal with it, certainly psychologically.

[h2ebits]

7. Need more detail

If as many as 1.6 million new jobs could be added to the economy by canceling the sequester, that would mean our federal government would have a LOT of extra money coming in from taxes and the Social Security Trust Fund would be building. It would also mean that the deficit would continue to drop as more people enter the system and pay taxes.

But let's not lose track of the ball here. The next thing up on our treasonous Congress' schedule is to privatize SS and Medicare, de-fund even more education, eliminate regulations and block new ones to keep us safe from the greedy, and basically eliminate any help for the citizens of this country while the corporations complete their coup.

The austerity program was based on seriously flawed spreadsheets compiled by bought and paid for "economists." Despite the best efforts to destroy the US as we know it, the American people are rising up against this and our deficit has come down dramatically without the sequester. The sequester has played a part this year in reducing the deficit even more than initially predicted but. . .

The goal for the United States and its people is MORE JOBS, improvement of infrastructure, etc. not eliminating life as we know it.

Government is not a business entity and it cannot be managed as a "for Profit" organization. Its goal is not greed but rather a means for all of us to benefit and do well. Remember: "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

[Igel]

10. Let's stop being innumerate.

The study is based on assumptions. They're not facts. They're assumptions.

And the study results in a distribution curve of possible outcomes. Some more likely, some less likely.

So the study gives a high and a low number, are going to correspond to some interval in the probabilities. Maybe a standard deviation. Maybe not.

The high-ball number is 1.6 million. "Up to 1.6 million", not "we predict 1.6 million jobs." Up to. And that's what you'll hear everybody saying, with absolute certainty that their misreading of the article says that's the actual number that would actually be created. To go through with the sequester will cause the lack of creation of that many jobs.

The low-ball number is 300 000. Notice that--a 1.3 million job difference. In one year. For the same cut. Based on the uncertainties in the assumptions. So that number we all want to believe might be 5 times too high. Ooh. Ouch.

But we can infer that there are probabilities of both higher and lower job creation numbers, with the actual number probably being higher or lowr something like 1/20th of the time. So that 1.6 million number might be too low. Or it might be too high.

Don't know what the "most probable" number is. The low-ball number is deemed a throw-away fact while the high-ball number is the one that's politically desirable.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

12. Why don't they called it 'CUTS' instead of those fancy words

The Republican voters would understand the word cut so they use words that they don't understan like sequester or austerity.