ECONOMY - Slash-and-Burn Budget Cuts

"Republican Budget Cuts Collide With Job Training to Assist Businesses" by Catherine Dodge, Bloomberg 3/31/2011

Excerpt

Michael Conner, an executive with Cincinnati-based Frisch’s Restaurants Inc. (FRS), says he’s all for the Republican push to shrink government spending -- except when it comes to job-training programs that help businesses.

In their quest for deep government spending cuts, U.S. House Republicans passed a budget bill that would slash funding for a nationwide program that trains unemployed workers and helps them find jobs with companies looking for qualified employees. Conner and other critics say that provision is at odds with Republicans’ pledge to bring down the jobless rate.

“I’m an advocate for small government, but this is certainly not the time nor the place for cutting of employment related funding,” said Conner, vice president of human resources at Frisch’s. The company, which operates Big Boy and Gold Corral restaurants, has about 8,600 workers and uses the training program.

State and local employment officials also complain that the proposed Republican cuts to the program would curtail job training during a fragile recovery from one of the worst economic slumps in U.S. history and cause job-assistance centers to shut down and fire workers.

Congress passed the Workforce Investment Act in 1998 with bipartisan support. The program funneled $3 billion in grants to states last year to help provide career and employment assistance.
Republican View

Some Republican lawmakers, in defending the proposed cuts, question the program’s success after a government report found inefficiencies.

Analysts say the push to significantly reduce the federal budget deficit will affect programs widely seen as worthwhile. “You are going to hit things inadvertently when the cuts are so sweeping,” said Ross Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Programs with a lot of support “get thrown in the throw-away pile.”

Aha yes, through baby out with the bathwater. Tea Party slash and burn.

My take on government spending (local, state, or federal)?

Reminder, the vast majority of money government spends ends up in American pockets; directly (government employees, like our troops or LEOs, that clerk at the DMV), via American businesses (governments buy from, and you are likely to work for one), via government programs (Social Security, unemployment, SDI, etc.), and more.