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600,000 Public School Layoffs

By Marie Diamond

Sept. 12, 2011--At least 600,000 government workers have lost their jobs since the recession began; Republicans, nevertheless, keep scapegoating public employees.

Indeed, it is teachers who have shouldered more than their fair share of economic pain.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, became the latest lawmaker to join in this trend during an appearance today on MSNBCs Morning Joe.

Issa said government shouldn’t try to save teachers’ jobs because it  would be like another stimulus package.

Issa continued: whether or not the federal government borrows money from overseas sources to keep teachers in state schools on the payroll seems to be stimulus II. Huh?

States must decide on the right number of teachers required and fund them, not borrow from overseas to keep $30 billion worth of money to aid the states.

We did that once. It’s time to say states have to step up to the plate. This is a good example of what should not be in any stimulus bill. We should not be maintaining government workers with borrowed money.

But, isn't that how we finance made-up wars?

Recent months have seen the sharpest decline in state and local jobs since the 1982.

In fact, federal payrolls have been mostly flat for years, even as the population has been growing. In November President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for 1.9 million federal workers.

Issa is wrong to suggest that the first stimulus package was unsuccessful. At its height Recovery Act funds were supporting up to 3.6 million jobs. In June of this year Recovery Act funding was still supporting up to 2.9 million jobs.

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David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief of The NY Times,  wrote the "Economics Scene" column. If state and local governments  continued to hire at their previous pace, they would have added half a million jobs to the economy. In other words, government austerity over the past two years “has cost the economy about one million jobs.”