Main Street

Local cuts are hurting the recovery

In 2010, an intense focus on jobs made the campaigns of Republicans like Ohio Governor John Kasich successful. Once in power, their ideological policies like cuts to local government are actually hurting the overall recovery they promised to help.

I use Kasich as an example not only because his contempt for workers is so transparent. I use him because under Kasich’s textbook conservative agenda of slashing state and local government and forking over cash to the super-rich, Ohio has lost 18,000 jobs in the past three months.

Over the course of three months this year – March [22], April [87] and May [63] – Ohio experienced a combined total of 172 mass layoffs, resulting in the loss of 8,600 jobs. Over the same three months, initial claimants for unemployment insurance [not seasonally adjusted] show a grand total of 18,143, now under the leadership of new Republican Gov. John Kasich.

What Kasich and his fellow ideologues don’t seem to get is that private and public sector workers are not different species. It doesn’t matter if someone is a public school teacher or a stockbroker: when that person loses their job, they can’t buy as much, and the whole economy suffers.

In other words, in the real world, the result of firing teachers, firefighters, and sanitation workers is fewer customers for groceries, cars, property, and all those other struggling businesses. Then those private businesses are less likely to hire. This is obvious to any kindergartner with a calculator, but the concept escapes the Ohio GOP.

Ohio isn’t alone. As Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic wrote, the recovery would be way more robust if state and local cuts hadn’t occurred – even if those budgets had simply stayed at 2009 levels. We could be seeing 326,000 more Americans working and $8.8 billion added to our GDP.

Despite the numbers, Kasich insists “We’re open for business…We’re winning in Ohio.” If he’s talking about the economy, he is incorrect. If he’s talking about the ideological test that Fox and the Koch Brothers have set out for him, then he’s on the money. But it’s no solace to the thousands that would be working if he was marching to a different tune.