When asked earlier this month about the job loss that would occur if the continuing resolution passed by House Republicans were actually implemented, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) replied “so be it.” “We’re broke. It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money,” he said.

And Boehner is evidently not the only one who feels that budget cuts should be imposed with complete disregard for their effect on employment. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep today, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) was asked if budget cuts should still go forward, even if they would result in widespread job loss, and replied “yes”:

INSKEEP: I want to ask something that a lot of people are confronting right now, as they deal with the federal deficit as well as state and local deficits that need to be closed. Are budget cuts — government budget cuts — worth it, even if they end up seriously costing a lot of jobs right now?

DANIELS: The answer is yes.

Last week, economists at Goldman Sachs estimated that the House Republicans’ continuing resolution would cause GDP to drop by 1.5 to 2 percent, which CAP economist Adam Hersh explained would translate into a one percentage point jump in the unemployment rate. Before that, the Economic Policy Institute found that the Republican plan would cause a loss of nearly one million jobs.

As if we needed more evidence of the effect GOP spending policy could have on employment, Moody’s Analytics predicted today that the House Republican plan would cause the loss of 700,000 jobs:

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday…[Moody's Chief Economist Mark] Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.

Republicans rode into the House majority chanting “where are the jobs?” but multiple independent analyses have now found that the vision they have for the federal budget would make unemployment substantially worse.

The protests over Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) legislative assault on public sector workers continue today, after Wisconsin police refused to evict protesters from the Wisconsin Capitol last night. Walker himself is going on a media tour, appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, as well as a statewide news magazine show, “Upfront With Mike Gousha.”

During the latter interview, Walker claimed that his “budget repair bill,” which actually has little to do with balancing Wisconsin’s budget, does not end collective bargaining for public employees, but only “narrow[s] it down”:

Q: Very briefly, do you see any need for public employee unions in this state, philosophically?

WALKER: If I didn’t, I would have eliminated collective bargaining all over.

Q: Did you think about that?

WALKER: We looked at every option. But in this case we said we could narrow it down, still have a role for collective bargaining, still have a role for public employee unions, but cap it in so that the taxpayers aren’t trumped in by the decision we currently see with collective bargaining.

Watch it:

Walker is making this claim because his budget repair bill would still allow workers to “negotiate” for their wages: under a cap that Walker and the Republican legislature want to set in stone. This is clearly not “collective bargaining” in any real sense of the word, since public employees would already have strict limits imposed upon them before they even get to the bargaining table. Plus, restricting collective bargaining to only wages means that the employer can simply change other elements of worker compensation (like slashing benefits) to make up for any wage increases, without workers having any say about it.

Walker’s goal is simply to bust public employee unions, which is exactly what happened in Indiana after Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) ended collective bargaining for public employees:

If there is one thing the two sides agree on, it’s that an end to collective bargaining will lead to far weaker public sector unions. Mr. Daniels said that after he banned bargaining, membership in the unions for state workers nosedived by 90 percent, with workers deciding it was no longer worth paying dues to newly toothless unions.

Under Walker’s bill, not only would workers lose their collective bargaining rights in all but name, they would also be subject to protections against unfair firings that are “far weaker and narrower than union protections.”

This is not the first time that Walker has tried to mislead the public about the practical implications of his union-busting effort. In fact, earlier this month, he ludicrously claimed that under his proposal “collective bargaining is fully intact.”

Today, protests against conservative attempts to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights continued in Wisconsin and other states across the nation, with new Main Street Movement demonstrations against attacks on the working class planned in both New Jersey and Florida. MoveOn.org is planning weekend rallies in all fifty states to “Save the American Dream.”

This movement began as a response to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) attempt to strip his state’s public employees of their collective bargaining rights, under the guise of a budget crisis. If Walker and the Republican legislature had their way, Wisconsin’s teachers, government employees, sanitation workers, and public university professors would be essentially barred from bargaining collectively. But in a direct rebuke to Walker, the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse voted overwhelmingly yesterday to join the American Federation of Teachers:

Faculty at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse voted 249-37 of a unit of 328 in favor of union representation through AFT-Wisconsin, a statewide labor federation affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The vote comes in the wake of Gov. Scott Walker having introduced a budget repair bill that would slash workers’ rights and remove academic staff and faculty’s right to collectively bargain.

“What we’ve seen at UW-La Crosse today is an extension of what we’ve seen across Wisconsin for the past two weeks,” stated Susan Crutchfield, an associate professor of English. “Like the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who have rallied in Madison, Superior, Fond du Lac, and dozens of other communities across our state, La Crosse faculty stood united today in saying, ‘We deserve a voice in the workplace.’”

Prof. Crutchfield added that Walker’s union-busting legislation was one of the reasons that the faculty moved to approve the new union. “When it became clear that the governor’s extremist legislation had nothing to do with balancing the budget and everything to do with denying workers’ rights, UW-La Crosse faculty realized the urgency in this vote,” she said.

Earlier this week, Gallup released a poll showing that 61 percent of Americans oppose Walker’s plan to bust public employee unions. The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent adds that, when these numbers are broken down, only those in the poll’s highest income category support Walker’s proposal, while “low-to-middle class folks all oppose it.”

As protests against conservative attempts to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights have unfolded in states across the nation, a slew of Republican governors have said they will not pursue similar policy steps to those championed by Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI). “That’s not our path,” said Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI). “I and my administration fully intend to work with our employees and union partners in a collective fashion.” A spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) added, “This is Pennsylvania, not Wisconsin. We’ve had Act 195 [the collective bargaining law] since 1970, and I anticipate that we will continue to have it.”

Earlier this week, it seemed that Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) was also unwilling to challenge collective bargaining rights for his state’s employees. “My belief is as long as people know what they’re doing, collective bargaining is fine,” Scott said in a radio interview. However, during a different interview with Bloomberg Television that is scheduled to air this weekend, Scott took a completely different stance, saying “it’d be great” to get rid of the collective bargaining rights of Florida employees:

He said Florida would be better off if public employees couldn’t form unions and that it’s unfair to taxpayers that state workers don’t contribute to their pensions. While Florida’s constitution grants state workers the right to unionize and bargain for workplace rights, Scott said, “It’d be great to be able to change it.”

“Our state workers don’t pay for anything into their pension plan. And we can’t afford that — it’s not fair to taxpayers,” Scott said. “If you didn’t have collective bargaining, would it be better for the state? Absolutely.”

For one thing, as Tax.com’s David Cay Johnston laid out, the notion that Florida’s employees “don’t pay for anything” when it comes to their pensions is wrong: these employees have agreed to defer some of their compensation, and take it in the form of a pension rather than wages. For another, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) already stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights, and even he couldn’t explain how it would help a state get into better fiscal shape. (Daniels also can’t quite pin down where he stands on the protest situation in his own state either.)

Scott already plans to pursue an agenda of corporate tax cuts paired with destructive spending reductions that will hurt low-income Floridians, gut the state’s health care system, and cause the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. And after a momentary fit of reason earlier in the week, he seems to have added union-busting to the list.

As the standoff between the Main Street Movement and Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) continues for the twelfth day, much of the media coverage — and anger — from both sides has focused on Walker’s efforts to strip Wisconsin public workers of their right to collective bargaining. But Walker’s assault on public employees is only one part of a larger political program that aims to give corporations free reign in the state while dismantling the healthcare programs, environmental regulations and good government laws that protect Wisconsin’s middle and working class.

Below, ThinkProgress examines ten of the most disastrous policies the Wisconsin GOP is pursuing:

1. ELIMINATING MEDICAID: The Budget Repair Bill includes a little-known provision that would put complete control of the state’s Medicaid program, known as BadgerCare, in the hands of the state’s ultra-conservative Health and Human Services Secretary Dennis Smith. Smith would have the authority to “to override state Medicaid laws as [he] sees fit and institute sweeping changes” including reducing benefits and limiting eligibility. Ironically, during the 1990s it was Republicans, especially former Gov. and Bush HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, who helped develop BadgerCare into one of the country’s most innovative and generous Medicaid programs. A decade later, a new generation of radical Republicans is hoping to destroy one of Wisconsin’s “success stories.”

2. POWER PLANT PRIVATIZATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL NEGLECT: The same budget bill calls for a rapid no-bid “firesale” of all state-owned power plants. One progressive blogger called the proposal “a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism” and suggested that the provision will open the way for large, politically connected corporations to buy up the state’s power plants on the cheap. While it’s unclear whether corporations would be interested in buying the plants, a similar proposal was vetoed six years ago by Gov. Jim Doyle (D), who called the plan fiscally and environmentally irresponsible. Many of Wisconsin’s power plants are in violation of federal clean air regulations and desperately need to be upgraded and cleaned up — not dumped into the private sector.

3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water. Conservatives have said that the clean water rule — which went into effect in December — is simply too expensive. Yet the rule only affects 12 percent of municipalities and the price may be worth it. In 1993, 104 people died and 400,000 fell sick when the Milwaukee water supply became infected. Even two decades later, the Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Board notes that 13 percent of acute gastro-intestinal illnesses in municipalities that don’t disinfect their water supplies are the result of dirty water. Municipalities can keep their water clean for as low as $10,000 per well — but apparently for the Wisconsin GOP that is too high a price to pay to keep citizens safe from deadly microorganisms.

4. DESTROYING WETLANDS: In January, Walker’s proposed regulatory reform bill exempted a parcel of wetland owned by a Republican donor from water quality standards. But the exemption was more than just an embarrassing giveaway to a GOP ally: environmental groups believe the bill’s special provision would actually affect the entire county, eliminating public hearings on proposed wetland development, short-circuiting approval of development projects, and disrupting the region’s water system.

5. FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY: Walker signed a bill this week requiring a 2/3 supermajority in the legislature to pass any tax increase. Republican lawmakers are now reportedly considering a constitutional amendment that would make the rule permanent. A similar constitutional amendment in California has been called the “source of misery” of that state’s crippling budget crisis and has forced lawmakers to “gut public education, slash social services and health care programs, close prisons, and lay off record numbers of public employees.” While claiming to “make a commitment to the future instead of [choosing] dire consequences for our children” Walker and GOP lawmakers are instead putting generations of Wisconsinites in a “fiscal strait-jacket.”

6. DISENFRANCHISING VOTERS: This week, Republican lawmakers moved forward on a bill that would require voters to present a photo ID from the DMV at the polls, making it significantly more difficult for the elderly, the disabled, college students, and rural residents to participate in elections. While Republican lawmakers insist the bill is necessary to prevent voter fraud, there have been almost no documented cases of fraudulent voting in the state. Instead, the Wisconsin State Journal writes, the GOP bill is going “overboard in limiting ballot access in a state proud of its long history of high participation in elections.”

7. CUTTING JOBS, LOSING THE FUTURE: Last fall, Walker killed an $810 million federally funded high-speed rail project, forcing the Transportation Department to pull its funding. Walker’s decision killed 130,000 expected jobs and forced the Spanish company Talgo to close its Milwaukee factory and layoff its 40 person staff. A spokeswoman for the company told The Daily Reporter that “the state’s decision to back away from the high-speed rail project sends a terrible message to businesses considering locating in the state.”

8. STIFLING INNOVATION: In late January, Walker introduced a bill that would ban wind-powered energy from Wisconsin and exacerbate the state’s dependence on out-of-state coal. If passed, it’s estimated that the law would immediately eliminate $1.8 billion in new wind power investments and jeopardize eleven currently proposed wind projects. After a public outcry earlier this month, Walker’s bill is (for now) dead.

9. “NAKED POWER GRAB”: Earlier this month in a party-line vote, the legislature ceded “extraordinary control” of the state’s rule-making oversight process to the governor. Walker now has complete power to draft agency rules which the legislature must then either approve or reject. The law gives Walker the power to write rules for formerly independent state agencies like the state Departments of Justice and Education — and most ominously the Government Accountability Board, the state’s ethics watchdog.

10. POLITICIZING STATE AGENCIES: A provision in Walker’s budget repair bill would convert thirty-seven state employees from civil servants to political appointees — consolidating his power over state government and expanding his power to “hire, fire and move key employees to carry out his agenda.”

Since his inauguration just two months ago, Walker and the Wisconsin GOP have taken unprecedented action to undermine the state’s unions, environmental regulations, long-term fiscal health, social welfare programs and basic democratic structure. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said Tuesday, Walker has stopped acting like the Republican governor of a Midwestern state and has instead “basically taken on the position of a dictator” with a “vision of America that’s similar to somewhere like Nigeria or Pakistan.”

– Kevin Donohoe

Early this morning, Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly approved legislation stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights, in the face of ongoing protests that have gripped Madison for well over a week. The bill passed at 1:17 a.m., and Republicans only held the vote open for “seconds.” The vote was called while many Democrats were outside the Assembly chamber, preventing them from casting no votes. Only 13 of the Assembly’s 38 Democratic members got their votes in on time.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) praised the Assembly’s action in a statement. However, the Assembly Republicans’ late-night procedural shenanigans fly directly in the face of commitments Walker made on the campaign trail, where he promised to end late-night votes because “nothing good happens after midnight”:

He promised to sign legislation if elected governor that prohibits the Legislature from voting after 10 p.m. or before 9 a.m.

“I have two teenagers and I tell them that nothing good happens after midnight. That’s even more true in politics,” he said in a statement. “The people of Wisconsin deserve to know what their elected leaders are voting on.”

A campaign spokesperson said at the time that Walker believes 10 p.m. is the appropriate hour to end floor work. “Scott’s been there and he’s seen it,” she said, referring to late-night work that allows lobbyists undue influence over legislation. Of course, this supposed commitment to transparency didn’t stop Walker, when he was a member of the Assembly himself, from “join[ing] with the Republican majority in January 1997 to eliminate a rule that required lawmakers to finish their floor sessions at 8 p.m.”

The anti-worker bill now moves to the Wisconsin state senate, which is unable to convene a quorum because its Democratic members are in Illinois, in protest of Walker’s attack on public sector employees. Meanwhile, Main Street movement protests have spread, with workers planning demonstrations in New Jersey and Florida.

House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) — who has said that Washington’s role is to “serve the banks” — announced today that his committee will mark up legislation to “pull the plug” on the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts:

“It’s time to pull the plug on these programs that are actually doing more harm than good for struggling homeowners,” he said. “These programs may have been well-intentioned, but they’re not working and, in reality, are making things worse.”

House Republicans want to rescind the funding that has already been allocated for these programs. This effort comes at the same time that the housing market is staring at a double-dip, due in part to a buildup of empty, foreclosed-upon homes. “You have massive oversupply” thanks to overbuilding in boom times and the current glut of foreclosed homes, economist Dean Baker told the Los Angeles Times.

Republicans have been no friend to foreclosure prevention programs recently, even though one million homes were foreclosed upon last year and another one million will likely enter foreclosure this year. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) said last month that foreclosure prevention efforts “need to stop,” and the GOP even blocked an Obama administration nominee because they though he might have been sympathetic to helping underwater homeowners with their mortgages.

While the administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts have fallen far short of their goals (and in some cases did put homeowners in worse financial shape than if they had simply foregone federal aid), the answer is to fix the programs, not abandon them. For instance, we could allow housing counselors to approve HAMP modifications (instead of waiting months as banks lose paperwork and punt the problem down the road) and make more of a push to implement automatic foreclosure mediation programs, which have been quite successful across the country in preventing foreclosures. We could also end the absurd practice of “dual-tracking,” under which the foreclosure process continues even while homeowners are under evaluation for a loan modification, which results in families who are eligible for modifications losing their homes anyway.

There is nothing to be gained by allowing more preventable foreclosures to go forward, blighting more neighborhoods and acting as an even bigger drag on the economy. But the GOP is pretending that the housing crisis simply doesn’t exist.

The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expand offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”

“This is adding one more tool to our toolkit,” Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs, told Bloomberg News. “At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.” As Bloomberg pointed out, oil-supported political action committees like the Independent Petroleum Association of America overwhelmingly donate to Republican candidates.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, API spent $6.7 million on lobbying alone last year, after clearing $7 million in 2009. In 2010, API was the seventh most prolific spender in the oil and gas industry, following ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Koch Industries and BP.

API’s turn toward direct political donations is doubly problematic because, in addition to acting as the industry’s chief lobbyists, the institute runs technical committees that set standards for the oil industry. In its official report, the commission that investigated the BP oil spill found that API was too “compromised” to be setting industry standards. “Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight,” the commission found. And this was before API established a political action committee!

In its proposed 2012 budget, the Obama administration suggested, once again, removing the billions in subsidies that taxpayers give oil companies every year. API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes,” even while admitting that cutting the subsidies and plowing the money back into clean energy technology would create “a lot more jobs.”

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

House Republicans rode into the majority with an explicit promise to spur job creation, repeating the mantra “where are the jobs?” over and over during the buildup to November’s election. However, since they’ve come into office, Republicans have spent their time on anything but job creation, bringing up bills repealing the Affordable Care Act and restricting a woman’s right to choose, while pushing for a series of budget cuts that would result in widespread job loss.

In fact, according to a new analysis by economists at Goldman Sachs entitled “Spending Showdowns and Government Shutdowns: Effects on Growth,” the package of spending cuts passed by House Republicans over the weekend will reduce economic growth by 1.5 to 2 percentage points in the next two quarters:

The spending cut package that passed the House of Representatives would have a deeper effect. Under the House passed spending bill, the drag on GDP growth from federal fiscal policy would increase by 1.5pp to 2pp in Q2 and Q3 compared with current law.

This would be a significant drop, as analysts only expect growth of four percent over those quarters. And as CAP economist Adam Hersh pointed out:

From the rule of thumb “Okun’s Law,” a 2 percent increase in GDP is associated with a 1 percent decrease in the unemployment rate. Based on this relationship, the Republican CR could cause unemployment to shoot from 9 percent up to 9.7-10 percent.

Republicans have been trying to claim that their budget slashing plan will lead to job creation (even as Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) shrugged off the obvious negative effect such cuts will have on public employment). But as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “this nonpartisan study proves that the House Republicans’ proposal is a recipe for a double-dip recession…This analysis puts a dagger through the heart of their ‘cut-and-grow’ fantasy.”

Earlier this month, the Economic Policy Institute released a report finding that the $100 billion in discretionary spending cuts that the House GOP passed last weekend would result in the loss of nearly one million jobs. “Cuts of this magnitude will undermine gross domestic product performance at a time when the economy is seeing anemic post-recession growth,” wrote EPI’s Rebecca Theiss.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) has justified his attempt to strip many of Wisconsin’s public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights by pointing to the state’s budget deficit. “The legislation I’ve put forward is about one thing. It’s about balancing our budget now — and in the future,” Walker said in an address last night.

Today, Wisconsin’s Republican officials took to the airwaves to disseminate the message, with Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and Sen. Ron Johnson both claiming that legislative union busting is necessary to fix Wisconsin’s budget woes:

LT. GOV. KLEEFISCH: These are facts and these are figures. There’s no negotiation on a budget that’s based on facts. We’re facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit in our next biennium. That means we need to have serious cuts…The collective bargaining is also a fiscal piece of this.

SEN. JOHNSON: Gov. Walker, this was dumped in his lap. A $3.6 billion biennial budget deficit. And he’s trying to fix it. He’s stepping up to the plate. And the Republican legislature is stepping up to the plate to actually fix the problem, making the hard choices…Let’s face it, in terms of electoral politics, the largest interest group was public sector labor unions.

Watch a compilation:

Wisconsin’s Republican officials are using the legitimate economic anxiety being felt across the country to push for changes that wouldn’t improve Wisconsin’s budget situation one iota. As Tim Fernholz wrote in the National Journal:

The state’s entire budget shortfall for this year — the reason that Walker has said he must push through immediate cuts — would be covered by the governor’s relatively uncontroversial proposal to restructure the state’s debt. By contrast, the proposals that have kicked up a firestorm, especially his call to curtail the collective-bargaining rights of the state’s public-employees, wouldn’t save any money this year.

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) — who successfully stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights in 2005 — was asked yesterday how such a move helps a state with its budget and had no answer at all. Wisconsin officials have informed Walker that his bill would actually result in the state losing $46 million in federal funds that are contingent on workers having collective bargaining rights.

As Adam Serwer wrote at The Plum Line, “this is no longer about ‘fiscal responsibility.’ It’s about whether or not public workers have a right to organize in their own interests — a right a majority of Americans support.” And it’s worth remembering that Walker has implemented a series of tax cuts that make the state’s long-term budget picture substantially worse.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) has been gaining lots of attention at the moment for his attempt to strip collective bargaining from many of his state’s public employees, essentially busting their union legislatively. But he is far from alone among Republican governors in trying to take a pound of flesh from his state’s working people.

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), for instance, proposed a budget yesterday that holds property tax rebates for seniors hostage to benefit cuts for public employees: if public sector workers don’t agree to the cuts, property tax rebates don’t go out. And of course, Christie has rhetorically bashed teachers’ unions since he came into office, in order to score political points. During an appearance on MSNBC today, Christie actually bragged that his state leads the nation in terms of public sector layoffs, claiming that “unions are trying to break the middle class”:

USA Today recently said that New Jersey has shed by percentage more public sector jobs in the last year than any state in America. And the reason we’ve done this is because our government was bloated and too big at every level…In New Jersey, we’re not trying to break the unions, the unions are trying to break the middle class in New Jersey, through the expenses. And they’re close to doing it.

Watch it:

Because of his mass layoffs of public employees, the number of unemployed workers has actually increased in New Jersey since Christie took office. And Christie’s assertion that unions are not good for the middle class is quite troubling.

As David Madland and Karla Walter pointed out, “the middle class is markedly stronger when workers join together in unions.” In fact, the decline in unionization rates over the last forty years has been almost perfectly mirrored by a drop in middle-class incomes. Income inequality in the U.S. is the worst its been since the 1920′s, with nearly 25 percent of the total income in the country going to the richest one percent. The richest 10 percent of Americans control 2/3rds of the country’s net worth.

When unionization rates were high, prosperity was broadly shared, and workers were able to enjoy their fair share of productivity gains. But the overall economy is also stronger when unions are strong: “From 1947 to 1973, the period when unions were strongest and nearly one-third of workers were organized, U.S. economic output nearly tripled in size, growing at an average of 3.8 percent annually.” Since 2001, economic output has been just 2.2 percent annually.

Several Republican governors — most notably Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) — are trying to legislatively strip public employees of their right to collectively bargain, under the guise of a budget crisis. These governors are using the economic anxiety being felt across the nation as a justification for eliminating the ability of workers to bargain, even though such rights have no bearing on a state’s fiscal soundness.

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) already stripped public employees of their right to collectively bargain in 2005. But even having personally implemented such a policy, Daniels can’t explain how it would help Wisconsin get its budget into balance. In fact, Daniels admitted to NPR’s Diane Rehm yesterday that removing collective bargaining rights from public employees is all about kneecapping unions politically:

REHM: Help me to understand how taking away the rights of collective bargaining would fix or help to fix the budget shortfall.

DANIELS: Well, the most powerful special interest in America today are the government unions. They’re the leading financial contributors. They have the biggest PAC’s. They have muscle. A lot of times their contracts provide for time off to go politic and lobby. And over the course of the last few decades, if there were ever injustices or shortfalls in how we took care of government employees, it has been fixed and over-fixed. And so I think that the — you know, he’s trying — what he’s trying to do is, in the public interest, interrupt this fortuitous process in which taxpayer dollars pay for very solid salaries for government employees. [...]

REHM: I still am totally in the dark as to how bargaining and the bargaining power of unions and taking that away is going to affect the budget process.

DANIELS: Well, if my newspaper is correct, he is not talking about that. He’s talking about narrowing the scope down to wages and, you know, that…

REHM: But they’ve already conceded wages.

DANIELS: Well, you know, this is — I think he’s trying to fix a structural problem, which I’ve demonstrated or discussed to you already, Diane. The problem comes from the, you know, forced expropriation, whether they like it or not, of money from — that started with the taxpayers, from the salaries of government workers, circulated back into a political machine that is the most powerful out there.

Daniels can’t give a reason for how eliminating collective bargaining would reduce state deficits because there isn’t one. In fact, “states with no collective bargaining rights for any public employees saw an average budget shortfall of 24.8 percent in 2010 while states (including the District of Columbia) with collective bargaining for all public employees had an average budget shortfall of 24.1 percent.”

Daniels is dealing with protests in his own state that mirror those occurring in Wisconsin. In fact, Indiana Democratic lawmakers left the state today — denying the state legislature a quorum — in order to block a bill that would make Indiana a “right to work” state, which would allow non-union members to free-ride on union contracts. Central Indiana Jobs with Justice called the bill “an attack on the middle class.”

Public workers in Ohio will be descending upon the Ohio statehouse today to protest Senate Bill 5, a legislative effort to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights. The bill is similar to one proposed in Wisconsin that set off days of protest there.

Wisconsin’s Republican leadership is trying to use the state’s budget woes as a justification for its assault on workers’ rights, even though stripping workers of the ability to collectively bargain won’t fix the state’s fiscal position (which has been made substantially worse by Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) insistence on a slew of tax cuts). And Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) last night broke out the same script on Fox News:

You know, to understand what we face out here, we’re $8 billion in the hole. And we are not a competitive state. We’ve lost 600,000 jobs in the last 10 years, and only California and Michigan have done worse. And our young people leave after three years, a third of our college graduates. What I’m doing is I’m going to cut taxes, preserve the tax cut we have, and I’m going to balance this budget and I’m going to restructure the state. And collective bargaining is just one piece of an overall reform program designed to make us competitive again…I mean, we’re $8 billion in the hole. If you were $8 billion in the hole and you realized there are things that you can do to control your costs or to give other people the means to control their costs, wouldn’t you do it? And that’s exactly what this bill is.

Watch it:

Kasich is indeed facing an $8 billion budget hole, but its unclear what stripping workers of their collective bargaining rights would do to fix that situation. As Policy Matters Ohio found, states that deny public workers the right to collectively bargain are in no better fiscal shape (and, in many cases, are worse off) than states that do allow workers to bargain collectively. “Ohio’s budget problem is a revenue crisis, caused by a weak economy and ill-advised tax reductions that have deprived the state of needed revenue. Eliminating collective bargaining is not going to solve a revenue crisis,” explained Policy Matters Ohio Executive Director Amy Hanauer.

Plus, Kasich, shortly after bemoaning his state’s budget situation, insisted that he will implement a slew of budget-busting tax cuts that he’s proposed. These cuts will double the state’s deficit — by eliminating the state’s estate tax and income tax — while likely not leading to any noticeable job growth. Kasich has even proposed privatizing some of the state’s assets in order to finance new tax cuts for corporations and the rich, as Kevin Donohoe pointed out.

Republicans across the country are using the understandable anxiety of difficult economic times to push forward proposals kneecapping their ideological foes: public employees and the unions that represent them. But if Kasich were serious about addressing his budget, he’d rethink implementing policies that will make the problem significantly worse, instead of launching a political assault that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

Protesting public workers in Wisconsin plan to continue demonstrating this week against Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) plan to strip them of their collective bargaining rights, as the state’s Republican lawmakers said that they will move forward with their agenda in the absence of state Democrats (who have set up shop in Illinois, to deny the state Senate a quorum). Walker has thus far refused multiple compromises offered by both the workers themselves and a member of his own party, insisting that any deal include an elimination of collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Walker’s stated reason for wanting to eliminate collective bargaining for state employees is Wisconsin’s economic woes. Last night, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R-WI) appeared on Fox News to claim that Walker’s union-busting approach is necessary because “we’re broke.” “Our governor, Scott Walker, has chosen to do the responsible thing and tell the truth to the taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin, and balance this budget in a sound way,” she said:

We just can’t afford it. We’re not joking when we say that we’re broke. We don’t have any money to negotiate with. [...] Wisconsin is proud to be a leader here. I think Gov. Scott Walker has done a tremendous job blaxing a trail when it comes to frugality and moderation as we approach a fiscal crisis. Because we know that Wisconsin is certainly not the only state facing this kind of deep budget crisis.

We have a $3.6 billion, with a b, deficit coming up in our next biennium. Right now, you know that for our budget repair bill we’re facing a $137 million hole. That’s what we need to fix, and that’s what states around the nation are looking to fix. Some are choosing to fix it by raising taxes. We know that our hard-working families in Wisconsin can’t afford that in the middle of the deepest economic recession in generations, and so our governor, Scott Walker, has chosen to do the responsible thing and tell the truth to the taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin, and balance this budget in a sound way.

Watch it:

Playing up budget woes during a time of high economic anxiety may make political sense, but the numbers don’t support Kleefisch and Walker’s claims. While Kleefisch cites a $3.6 billion deficit in the next state budget period as a justification for attacking workers’ rights, it was Walker who pushed through a package of tax cuts that have significantly worsened the state’s fiscal standing in that very timeframe. “Walker was not forced into a budget repair bill by circumstances beyond [his] control,” said Jack Norman, research director at the Institute for Wisconsin Future. “He wanted a budget repair bill and forced it by pushing through tax cuts.”

Even if Walker hadn’t personally made the fiscal situation in his state much worse, stripping workers of collective bargaining rights won’t actually make it any better, saving taxpayers “almost nothing.” As John Sides pointed out, states with higher rates of unionization do not have higher budget deficits, while Wisconsin public employees already make substantially less money than their private sector counterparts. Wisconsin workers have already agreed to concessions on pay and benefits, so long as they retain their collective bargaining rights.

All in all, Walker and Kleefisch are using the guise of a budget crisis to push forward an ideological assault on unions and workers. Walker may want to remember that the last time he went union-busting in this manner, when he was Milwaukee County Executive in 2009, it ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Wisconsin’s newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker is facing a growing backlash over his attempt to cut pay and eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in his state. Although Walker is claiming his power grab is an attempt to close a budget gap, the budget “crisis” was engineered by Walker as soon as he got into office. As Brian Beutler reported, half of the budget shortfall comes from Walker’s own tax cuts for businesses and other business giveaways enacted in January.

A number of the big business interests standing with Walker are beneficiaries of his administration’s tax giveaways. But the greatest ally to Walker is the dirty energy company Koch Industries. In response to the growing protests in Madison, Koch fronts are busing in Tea Party protesters to support Walker and his union-busting campaign. Last night, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz reported on the involvement of Club for Growth and the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity in the pro-Walker protest scheduled tomorrow. Watch it:

Koch Industries is a major player in Wisconsin: Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant:

Officials at Georgia-Pacific said the company is laying off 158 workers at its Day Street plant because out-of-date equipment at the facility is being replaced with newer, more-efficient equipment. The company said much of the new, papermaking equipment will be automated. [...] Malach tells FOX 11 that the layoffs are not because of a drop in demand. In fact, Malach said demand is high for the bath tissue and napkins manufactured at the plant.

Koch Industries was one of the biggest contributors to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, funneling $43,000 over the course of last year. In return, Koch front groups are closely guiding the Walker agenda. The American Legislative Exchange Council, another Koch-funded group, advised Walker and the GOP legislature on its anti-labor legislation and its first corporate tax cuts.

According to the EPA, Koch businesses are huge polluters, emitting thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants. As soon as he got into office Walker started cutting environmental regulations and appointed a Republican known for her disregard for environmental regulations to lead the Department of Natural Resources. In addition, Walker has stated his opposition to clean energy jobs policies that might draw workers away from Koch-owned interests.

Moreover, other organizers for the pro-Walker protest are from groups associated with corporate and Koch interests. American Majority, a Virginia-based front group founded by organizers funded by millionaire investor Howie Rich, is on the ground contacting Wisconsin Tea Parties to support Walker in Madison. Austin James, an American Majority official who was caught teaching Tea Party members to spam Amazon.com profiles of liberal books with negative comments, is the contact for the Facebook page organizing the pro-Walker protest. Eric O’Keefe, a longtime conservative operative who helps lead American Majority, attends Koch strategy meetings.

The for-profit school industry is currently engaged in a pitched lobbying battle to stop the Department of Education from implementing new regulations to increase accountability for career colleges and other for-profit higher education companies. Investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the Los Angeles Times, PBS Frontline, and others have found that the for-profit “subprime” school industry routinely fools students into taking loans they are not prepared to pay back by scamming students with false promises of high paying jobs, falsely claiming that their credits transfer to major universities, and promising certifications that the schools are not prepared to provide. Although just 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults — and 90 percent of their money comes from taxpayer-funded programs.

As the industry ramps up its lobbying efforts — just this week, hiring another high-profile political press flak — ThinkProgress has learned of a new set of fake letters supporting the industry, this time to intimidate reform proponents from playing a part in the process. In January, Campus Progress, an affiliate of the same nonprofit that hosts ThinkProgress, the Center for American Progress, helped organize a letter urging the Obama administration to enact strong regulations to curb the abuses by the for-profit college industry. Many of the organizations that cosigned the letter later received nearly identical e-mails attacking the reforms and urging them to disassociate themselves from the coalition effort. The identical letters, from apparently fake constituents of each group, cited a silly, debunked conspiracy theory conjured by lobbyists to smear proponents of reform. The false assertions in the letters paralleled suggestions in articles published the same week by a contributor to the Daily Caller website and by Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW). The source of the letters remains a mystery at this time. Below are three screenshots of such letters:

Below are three screenshots of such letters:

To see more of the copy-and-paste-attack letters to reform proponents, click here.

Currently, Rep. John Kline (R-MN), Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and other lawmakers are proposing an amendment to the budget continuing resolution to block the Department of Education from reining in out of control subprime schools. Kline, who has accepted over $100,000 in campaign funds from subprime college companies, has even sought a bailout of the industry with even more taxpayer money. Hastings, another friend of the industry, participated in an industry-orchestrated rally last year (here he is at the rally with industry lobbyists). Despite powerful floor statements by advocates for holding the worst for-profit schools accountable, the amendment passed the House Thursday night on a voice vote, with a roll call vote scheduled for later today.

Earlier this week, ThinkProgress revealed several elements of the subprime school lobbying campaign. The industry has retained over a dozen high profile lobbying firms, deployed television and Internet advertising, and perhaps most insidiously, has hired a number of astroturf lobbying firms to generate fake letters and public outrage on behalf of the industry. For instance, Goldman Sachs-owned Education Management Corporation (known for its Art Institutes and other for-profit colleges) has retained the infamous astroturf firm DCI Group and has generated 74 identical letters from the same person opposing reform.

Last Thursday, ThinkProgress revealed that lawyers representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most powerful trade associations for large corporations like ExxonMobil and CitiGroup, had solicited a proposal from a set of military contractors to develop a surreptitious campaign to attack the Chamber’s political opponents, including ThinkProgress, the Change to Win labor coalition, SEIU, StopTheChamber.com, MoveOn.org, U.S. Chamber Watch and others. The lawyers from the Chamber’s longtime law firm Hunton and Williams had been compiling their own data set on some of these targets. However, the lawyers sought the military contractors for assistance.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the proposals — created by military contractors Palantir, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal, collectively known as “Team Themis” — were discussed at length with the Chamber’s lawyers over the course of several months starting in October of 2010. The core proposals called for snooping on the families of progressive activists, creating phony identities to penetrate progressive organizations, creating bots to “scrape” social media for information, and submitting fake documents to Chamber opponents as a false flag trick to discredit progressive organizations.

In addition to the Team Themis plans that ThinkProgress and other outlets have reported on, a closer look at the proposals show that the firms had planned to use exploits to steal information from the Chamber’s opponents, or worse. On November 2, HBGary Federal executive Aaron Barr sent John Woods, a lawyer at Hunton and Williams representing the Chamber, two documents discussing tactics for assisting the Chamber (view the e-mail here). One presentation (click here to download) boasted of HBGary Federal’s capabilities in “Information Operations,” a military contractor term for offensive data extraction techniques typically reserved for use against terrorist groups. The slide includes sections on “Vulnerability Research/Exploit Development” and “Malware Analysis and Reverse Engineering.” View a screenshot below:

HBGary, the parent company of HBGary Federal, specializes in analyzing “malware,” computer viruses that are used to maliciously steal data from computers or networks. In other presentations, Barr makes clear that his expertise in “Information Operations” covers forms of hacking like a “computer network attack,” “custom malware development,” and “persistent software implants.” The presentation shows Barr boasting that he had knowledge of using “zero day” attacks to exploit vulnerabilities in Flash, Java, Windows 2000 and other programs to steal data from a target’s computer.

Indeed, malware hacking appears to be a key service sold by HBGary Federal. Describing a “spear phishing” strategy (an illegal form of hacking), Barr advised his colleague Greg Hoglund that “We should have a capability to do this to our adversaries.” In another e-mail chain, HBGary Federal executives discuss using a fake “patriotic video of our soldiers overseas” to induce military officials to open malicious data extraction viruses. In September, HBGary Federal executives again contemplate their success of a dummy “evite” e-mail used to maliciously hack target computers.

Some of the initial e-mails discussing the Chamber deal with Team Themis stress the fact that HBGary Federal would provide “expertise on ‘digital intellgence collection’ and social media exploitation.’”

Barr also sent another document to the Chamber’s attorney describing in greater detail Team Themis’ hacking abilities (download a copy here). In one section, Team Themis claims that “if/when Hunton & Williams LLP needs or desire,” they can use “direct engagement” to “provide valuable information that cannot be acquired through other means.” This cryptic pledge appears to be in reference to same malware data intrusion techniques proposed in the other Team Themis documents. View a screenshot below:

In an e-mail on November 9th, Barr sent Chamber attorney John Woods an e-mail about his data extraction capabilities (view a copy here). Barr had compiled a dossier on a top Chamber attorney, Richard Wyatt, and hoped to use it as an example of what they could do to the Chamber’s adversaries. However, in the e-mail, Barr claimed that he realized that Wyatt’s wife’s computer had core vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain access to Richard’s personal data. “If I can exploit her account through one of her social connections I can exploit the home network/system,” he wrote. This explains why Team Themis devoted so much time to researching the families and children of progressive activists, to find vulnerabilities in their computer systems.

It should be noted that the Chamber’s attorneys and lobbyists were well aware of Team Themis’ plans. A sample demonstration of Team Themis work had “sold the Chamber” at one point. Throughout the conversations made available by the leaked e-mails, neither the Chamber or its attorneys ever raised ethical complaints.

View a timeline of the ChamberLeaks scandal composed by the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson here.

Our guest blogger is Mike Elk, a freelance labor journalist and third generation union organizer based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him for more updates on Wisconsin on twitter at @MikeElk.

Today, 14 Democratic Wisconsin State Senators walked out of the chamber holding up solidarity fists — denying Republicans the quorum to hold a vote on the Budget Repair Bill, which would strip public employees of their right to collectively bargain. According to reports, the State Senate Democrats have fled the state to avoid state troopers forcing them to come back into quorum. Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D) told WisPolitics this afternoon that “Senate Democrats left the state in an attempt to force Republicans to negotiate a compromise to proposed changes to the bargaining rights of public employees.”

Some state troopers have already told union leaders that, in a sign of support for striking workers, they are refusing to track down or arrest any state legislators that they encounter. Capitol Police already have refused to kick out of the State Capitol the nearly 5,000 protestors that the Wisconsin Department of Administration has announced are there. Early today, reports from Twitter and sources on the ground said that protesters were literally blocking members of the Wisconsin State Senate GOP from re-entering the chamber in case they tried to take a vote on the bill without a quorum being in place.

The mass protests in Wisconsin seem to be turning public support strongly behind the unions there. President Obama, who in the past had upset public employees union by his endorsement of the mass firing of unionized teachers in Rhode Island last year and calling for a federal wage freeze, gave a strong statement of support for the workers to Milwaukee TV station saying:

Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally seems like more of an assault on unions. And I think it’s very important for us to understand that public employees, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends. These are folks who are teachers and they’re firefighters and they’re social workers and they’re police officers.

The DNC and OFA also launched campaigns to support the mass protests going on in Madison, Wisconsin, where an estimated 30,000 protestors are gathered outside of the state Capitol. It is the first time that the DNC and OFA have gotten involved in worker’s right issues and might preview help to come in the assault on public employees across the country.

Protests are expected to spread as public support rallies behind workers in Wisconsin. Sources on the ground in Madison, tell me City employees in Madison are now debating going out on a general strike. Also, over 6,000 students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison walked out of classes in a sign of support.

It now appears that the only way Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker might be able to disperse the estimated crowd of 30,000 outside of the Capitol is to call in the National Guard as he threatened. The question on everyone’s mind is if Governor Walker will resort to martial law in order to stop the protesters.