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Aug 6 / thomas.krafft

Thanks GOP and Tea Party, for nothing.

So, Republican and Tea Party politicians came to power last year promising jobs and growth. Here is how they’re doing so far…

They’re holding up funding for the FAA, the agency that, you know, helps planes land safely. The immediate effect was to put 4,000 employees out of work, shut down construction projects employing tens of thousands of Americans, and costing upwards of a billion dollars in ticket fee revenues that the government won’t collect.

They held hostage what would have otherwise been a simple administrative act that says America will pay the bills from last year’s budget, knowing we may risk at minimum a downgrade is the U.S.’s AAA credit rating. Today, S&P downgraded us, and Moody’s is next. This will raise the cost of our debt and payments, in addition to adding costs to all financing, goods and services in the U.S. – effectively cutting 1 trillion out of the U.S. economy directly (as a result of the hostage deal), while also adding 1 trillion in costs (higher money rates)… All told, this is going to cause a net loss to the economy of at least two trillion dollars.

You can read more here and here.

Add to that figure, the 2.5 trillion dollars that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest top tier of Americans will cost us over the next 10 years, and the pattern and proof of GOP and Tea Party damage is pretty clear.

Thanks GOP and Tea Party. Thanks for nothing.

I can’t wait for 2012. I only hope they don’t manage to do any more harm between now and the election.