Recently, a slew of economic analysts have put forward estimates regarding the number of jobs that would be lost if the spending cuts approved by House Republicans were actually implemented. Economists at Goldman Sachs estimated that the GOP’s proposed cuts would lower GDP growth by two percentage points, while Moody’s Analytics estimated that the cuts would cause the loss of 700,000 jobs. The Economic Policy Institute pegged the job loss at closer to one million.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before Congress today and was asked about these analyses. He said that, in his opinion, the effect of the cuts would not cause quite as much job loss as Moody’s or Goldman estimated. House Republicans are crowing triumphantly that this vindicates their proposed cuts. “Senate Democrats should find new talking points if they’re going to continue to stand in the way of House Republican efforts to eliminate barriers to job creation through much needed spending reductions,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

But the GOP is neglecting to mention that Bernanke actually agreed with the analyses showing that the House GOP plan would cause job loss. He just quibbled over how much:

BERNANKE: Obviously [the cuts] would be contractionary to some extent, but our analysis doesn’t give a number that high. [...]

SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): What is your impact?

BERNANKE: Several tenths, on GDP. [...]

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Those cuts would create job loss. I don’t mean overall job loss, macro, but those cuts could. Do you agree with that?

BERNANKE: The cuts would presumably lower overall demand in the economy and would have some effect on growth and employment.

SCHUMER: Good, so the answer is yes?

BERNANKE: Yes.

Watch it:

So what we’re talking about here is not whether the GOP’s cuts will cause job loss, but how much job loss they will cause. Bernanke, Goldman Sachs, Moody’s, and EPI are all united in saying that loss will occur; they just differ on the final number. As Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum put it, “Maybe it’s a million jobs, maybe it’s half a million jobs. Maybe it will cost a point of GDP, maybe it will cost half a point of GDP. But considering that the economy is still sluggish and unemployment is extremely high, why are we considering budget cuts that will have any negative effect on jobs and growth?”

The House GOP actually cheering when yet another economist says that their cuts will increase unemployment continues the very cavalier attitude Republicans have had regarding this point. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) replied “so be it” to those pointing out that his party will increase unemployment, while Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) said that GOP lawmakers at all levels of government should carry out spending cuts “even if they end up seriously costing a lot of jobs right now.”

As we’ve been detailing, the continuing resolution that House Republicans have approved — which sets spending levels for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year — would gut important federal investments in special education, K-12 education for low-income students, federal job training, environmental protection, community health centers, infrastructure, and programs that aid both pregnant women and newborns.

Melissa Boteach, Manager of the Half in Ten campaign, added one more example to this egregious list today — the House Republican spending plan would prevent 10,000 low-income military veterans from receiving housing assistance:

The House GOP is boasting that their spending bill to fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 makes the largest cuts to domestic annual spending in history. But you don’t hear them boasting that these cuts will cut unemployed workers off of job training, force low-income veterans into homelessness, result in millions of low-income college students losing some or all of their education aid, or cause tens of thousands of vulnerable seniors to lose access to home-delivered food baskets…Cuts in the GOP bill would cut in half the number of veterans who would receive housing vouchers this year, preventing 10,000 low-income veterans from receiving assistance to avoid homelessness.

This cut would come at a time when 135,000 veterans are already homeless. According to a study from the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs, about 16 percent of the homeless population is composed of veterans:

About 16% of homeless adults in a one-night survey in January 2009 were veterans, though vets make up only 10% of the adult population. More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter — a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets. The urgency of the problem is growing as more people return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found 11,300 younger veterans, 18 to 30, were in shelters at some point during 2009. Virtually all served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The homeless veterans covered in the study amount to “one of every 168 veterans in the USA and one of every 10 veterans living in poverty.”

Republicans, of course, pledged to protect America’s veterans from these kinds of cuts. In fact, their much-ballyhooed “Pledge to America” promised “common-sense exceptions [from spending cuts] for seniors, veterans, and our troops.” Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) himself endorsed the same exemptions. The Obama administration, meanwhile, called for increasing funding for the voucher program in its 2012 budget.

Koch Industries, the international conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, is not only the second largest private company in America, it is the most politically active. As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy — from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks. In an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal today, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch fired back at his critics, who have grown more vocal as it has become clear that Koch groups are providing the political muscle for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) union-busting power grab.

In his piece, Charles portrays himself as simply an ideological advocate, and says his money to political groups is only meant to “enhance true economic freedom.” He chides special interests that have “successfully lobbied for special favors,” claiming “crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.” But in reality, the focus of the Koch political machine is geared towards “crony capitalism” — corrupting government to make Charles and his brother David Koch richer. Koch’s Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company’s long running history of winning special deals from the government and manipulating the market to pad Koch profits:

– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. Levine also notes that Koch’s cattle ranching company, Matador Cattle Company, uses a New Deal program to profit off federal land for free.

– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in a deal even conservatives alleged was a quid pro quo because of Koch’s campaign donations, handed Koch Industries a lucrative contract to supply the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve with 8 million barrels of crude oil. The SPR deal, done initially in 2002, was renewed in 2004 by Bush administration officials. During the occupation of Iraq, Koch won significant contracts to buy Iraqi crude oil.

– Although Koch campaigned vigorously against health reform — running attack ads, sponsoring anti-health reform Tea Parties, and comparing health reform to the Holocaust — Koch Industries applied for health reform subsidies made possible by the Obama administration.

– The Koch brothers have claimed that they oppose government intervention in the market, but Koch Industries lobbies aggressively for taxpayer handouts. In Alaska, blogger Andrew Halcro reported that a Koch subsidiary in Fairbanks asked Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration to use taxpayer money to bail out one of their failing refinery.

– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminent domain — government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, a special loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.

– Koch Industries has been the recipient of about $85 million in federal government contracts mostly from the Department of Defense. Koch also benefits directly from billions in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies and ethanol production.

Charles has compared himself to a libertarian “Martin Luther,” evangelizing to the world for their supply side cause. However, the tens of millions in campaign donations and the dozens of front groups funded by Koch work in tandem to promoting the business interests of Koch Industries.

Koch funds both socially conservative groups and socially liberal groups. However, Koch’s financing of front groups and political organizations all have one thing in common: every single Koch group attacks workers’ rights, promotes deregulation, and argues for radical supply side economics. Not only do the Koch’s front groups pad Koch Industries’ bottom line, they supply the Koch brother’s talking points. In fact, for his opinion piece today, Charles heavily relied on front groups he finances for statistics. The “freedom index” cited by Charles is a creation of the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, and the erroneous “unfunded liabilities” claim was supplied by the Koch-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.

Former Shell Oil CEO John Hofmeister earlier this month broke ranks with the rest of his Big Oil brethren and admitted that oil companies do not need the billions in taxpayer subsidies that they receive every year. “In the face of sustained high oil prices it was not an issue — for large companies — of needing the subsidies to entice us into looking for and producing more oil,” Hofmeister said.

Since the Obama administration came into office, it has been proposing to strip Big Oil subsidies. But Republicans (joined by quite a few Democrats) have time and again objected, ensuring that the hugely profitable oil industry continues to receive federal largesse. In fact, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed cutting $35 billion in oil subsidies last year, every Republican voted against it. But today, on C-Span’s Washington Journal, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) broke with his party and called for cutting Big Oil’s subsidies, explaining that oil companies are “doing just fine on their own”:

Q: Why can’t we start collecting royalties, finally, from the oil companies? Or do something about the subsidies that these very wealthy corporations have? Why can’t we get rid of these tax havens? Why can’t we talk about those things? Why can’t we put those on the table as well?

KIRK: I think we should. In the House of Representatives, I voted to wipe out many of the oil company subsidies. They’re doing just fine on their own. I think that many of the corporate welfare programs are misplaced.

Watch it:

To say that oil companies are doing “just fine” is an understatement, to say the least. In fact, “The big five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a total profit of nearly $1 trillion over the past decade.” ExxonMobil, of course, has broken and then rebroken the record for most profitable year in history. And the current unrest in the Middle East is going to drive these profits even higher.

Republicans assert that removing the subsidies will cause job loss and an increase in oil prices. However, according to the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury, cutting the subsidies would affect domestic oil production by less than .5 percent. In fact, the United States produces about the same amount of oil now that it produced in the 1950s, despite billions in subsidies that have been handed out over the years. Such a small change in production is also unlikely to cause significant job loss.

Kirk should be applauded for taking a stand when the rest of his party has been bowing to Big Oil’s influence. However, he is not a strident opponent of all corporate welfare, as he is in favor of giving banks senseless subsidies to originate student loans.