One of the tenets of right-wing rhetoric in the United States is to reject the idea that the government should spend money in a down economy to kickstart growth and create jobs. But during an appearance on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show last week, conservative Republican Rep. James Lankford (OK) appeared to deviate from this ideology.

Lankford informed Ratigan of a list of things he believes grow the economy, and one of the elements for growth he listed was government spending, even going as far as to say that if “we’re hammered” in that area — meaning we don’t have enough government spending — we’re “doomed”:

LANKFORD: An economy grows based on its own consumption, based on investment, based on government spending, and based on trade. And if we’re hammered on all of those, we’re doomed.

Watch it:

It is refreshing to see Lankford break with the ultra-conservative orthodoxy of his political party. One would hope he would back up his words with his votes in the future.

Although the nation’s unemployment rate remains above 9 percent and 14.1 million Americans are out of work, two GOP senators think what the economy needs right now is to lay off another 300,000 workers. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced legislation this week that takes aim at federal workers, ostensibly to save $600 billion by cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs. Their bill would also freeze federal salaries and bonuses, eliminate 15 percent of contract workers, and slash the federal travel budget by an astonishing 75 percent:

Under the bill, S. 1476, salaries and bonuses would be frozen for three years, which Hatch said amounts to $140 billion in reduced spending over 10 years.

It would also require the administration to cut the size of the federal workforce by 15 percent over 10 years, amounting to 300,000 fewer workers. “This could easily be accomplished through attrition and would save taxpayers over $225 billion over that time,” Hatch said.

Cutting 15 percent of contract workers would save another $230 billion over 10 years, he said.

A 75 percent cut to the federal travel budget would save an estimated $15 billion.

Hatch hinted at this true motive when he said, “I don’t see any way that we can restore the integrity of the nation’s fiscal position without significantly reducing the size and cost of the federal government.” Conservatives have been scapegoating government employees despite the fact that public sector workers have shouldered more than their fair share of economic pain.

As Matt Yglesias has documented, more than 500,000 government workers have lost their jobs since January 2009. 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.

The Federal Aviation Administration is now in day 12 of a costly shutdown caused by House Republicans’ insistence that a measure making it harder for transportation workers to form a union be attached to agency’s re-authorization package. But if that rule were followed in congressional elections, the Republican leading the fight — House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) — wouldn’t even be a congressman.

The rule Mica attached to the package would make it harder to form unions by counting eligible voters who do not cast ballots as “no” votes, as opposed to leaving non-voters out entirely, as is done in the regular election process. According to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the results of Mica’s 2010 election would have been dramatically different with this rule in effect:

Rep. Mica received support from 69% of the voters in his district who cast a ballot in his successful 2010 re-election campaign, amounting to slightly over 185,000 actual votes tallied for him.

However, if you add the over 83,000 voters who voted against Rep. Mica to 312,000 eligible voters who did not participate, then Rep. Mica would only muster 32% of the overall total — falling far short of the majority needed for election. Rep. Mica would lose handily to the 68% of “voters” who chose his opponent or were non-participating voters whose absence was counted as a vote for the alternative.

In fact, the CWA found that if the rule applied to all congressional elections, the United States government wouldn’t have a single member of Congress:

None of the current Members of Congress would have won election in 2010 under this standard. For each of the 435 House races in the 2010 elections, if you added the non-voting eligible voting population in a congressional district to the actual vote total cast for the opponent(s) of the current Member, then not one Member would have mustered the majority of votes needed to win election.

According to the report, only six of the 435 members of Congress would have received more than 40 percent of the vote under this type of election. Mica’s proposal is not an assault on unions — it is an assault on the democratic election process itself.

Earlier this year, former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), who left Congress ostensibly to engage in nobler pursuits and avoid the rancid bipartisanship of Washington, promptly became a lobbyist, signed on as a Fox News commentator, and joined an anti-regulatory road show sponsored by the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Alongside former George W. Bush chief of staff Andy Card, Bayh promulgated debunked right-wing nonsense about the cost that regulation has on economic growth and job creation.

Not to be outdone, Bayh’s former colleague, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — who was defeated by Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) — has joined the notoriously right-wing National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), and is engaging in a similar dissemination of misleading conservative economics:

The nation’s leading small-business organization, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), today launched a new campaign targeting the increasing number of regulations handed down by the Obama administration that are hampering small business’ ability to create jobs and economic growth. The multi-year effort aims to give voice to America’s small businesses, which create two-thirds of the net new jobs in the U.S. each year. Former U.S. Senator and Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations chairwoman Blanche Lincoln joined NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner to announce the coalition in Washington.

As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and Zach Carter reported, while the NFIB purports to speak for small business, it “is run mostly by and for Republicans“:

Of the 11 lobbyists currently employed by the NFIB, nine are former staffers for Republican lawmakers (one is a former Democratic staffer and another is an academic with ties to JPMorgan Chase and the New York Federal Reserve). The organization endorsed 319 politicians in the 2010 elections, 310 of them Republicans. And 93 percent of the $745,051 that the NFIB deployed in campaign contributions went to GOP candidates. The group’s independent arm spent an additional $1 million, all of it on behalf of Republicans.

In a statement, Lincoln attacked government regulations that she claims “are causing uncertainty and ultimately harming small businesses and their ability to create jobs,” citing “a report conducted for the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy last year, government regulations currently cost the U.S. economy $1.75 trillion a year, or more than 12 percent of our national GDP.”

But as Wake Forest Professor Sidney Shapiro wrote, that study is complete bunk. “That study is popular with anti-regulation advocates, but never stood up to scrutiny,” he wrote, noting that it contains “serious methodological problems.” The Congressional Research Service came to the same conclusion.

John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute found that the study Lincoln is citing “contains basic conceptual mistakes and relies on extraordinarily poor data.” “Its results should neither be used as a valid measure of the economic costs of regulation nor as a guide for policy,” he said. However, Lincoln evidently feels fine helping right-wing organizations lie about the effect regulation is having on the economy.

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he is ready and willing to slash entitlements like Medicare, because, in his opinion, Americans have to “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many“:

What we need to be able to do is to demonstrate that that is the better way for the people of this country. Get the fiscal house in order, come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that, frankly, are not going to be kept for many. [...] The math doesn’t lie.

Watch it:

Republicans have been saying for months that they want to preserve programs like Medicare and Social Security for all people over the age of 55, but that those under 55 will have to shift into a different program. But Cantor’s pronouncement is maybe the most explicit explanation that, under the GOP’s vision, the government would be actively reneging on promises made to those who haven’t yet hit the arbitrary age of 55.

Of course, the math would look much better, particularly on Social Security, if the GOP were to back off its insistence that the government not collect a single dime in new revenue. Meanwhile, Jacob Hacker, political science professor at Yale University, has called the GOP’s scheme to raise the Medicare retirement age “the single worst idea for Medicare reform” since it “saves Medicare money only by shifting the cost burden onto older Americans caught between the old eligibility age and the new, as well as onto the employers and states that help fund their benefits.”