Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist has held most Republicans by the scruff of the neck during recent tax debates due to their having signed the ATR anti-tax pledge, which states that the signees will not vote for a tax increase any time, for any reason. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who received accolades from Norquist during his presidential run, is aiming to start a similar pledge in the Lone Star State:

Borrowing a page from anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s playbook, Perry said on Monday, “Each and every member of the Legislature or anyone aspiring to become a member of the Legislature should sign on.” And right on the Governor’s website, individuals and lawmakers can sign on to the Compact: Yes, I stand with Governor Perry and I support his Texas Budget Compact. I want my state representatives in the Texas Legislature to sign on to Governor Perry’s Texas Budget Compact.

The compact calls for complete opposition to tax increases, as well as constitutional spending limits and restrictions on using the state’s Rainy Day Fund (which Perry previously plugged using federal money meant for education). While Perry isn’t personally tracking who signs his pledge, he said that outside organizations might.

Part of the compact calls for legislators to eschew budget gimmicks, even though Perry himself is quite fond of using such gimmicks to balance his budget. As Texas State Rep. Mike Villarreal said in a statement, “Governor Perry loves to talk about his principles in the abstract, but he doesn’t want to discuss the disabled kids who lose health services when he won’t close corporate tax loopholes, or the students crowded into full classrooms when he won’t touch the Rainy Day Fund.”

Fortunately, several lawmakers at the federal level have broken with Norquist and his anti-tax pledge. “I think anybody who doesn’t indicate their willingness to look at revenues — expiration of tax loopholes, tax credits, increase in contribution to Social Security, which is a tax, and otherwise — would be disingenuous and irresponsible,” said GOP Rep. Timothy Johnson (IL).

It seems that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) might have been overreaching when he promised to create 250,000 new jobs in his first term. While Walker has spent the last twelve months slashing state budgets and busting unions, Wisconsinites have been dealing with the consequences. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Walker’s state saw the largest decrease in jobs over the last year, dropping nearly a full percentage point:

Over the year, nonfarm employment increased in 45 states and the District of Columbia, decreased in 4 states, and was unchanged in Alabama. The largest over-the-year percentage increase occurred in North Dakota (+6.5 percent). The largest over-the-year percentage decrease in employment occurred in Wisconsin (-0.9 percent).

Walker, meanwhile, told Newsmax this week that, “We ultimately saw a net increase in jobs this year.” That is incorrect, unless by ‘we’ he means a group other than Wisconsinites.

This just adds more evidence to an already existing trend: states with the most drastic budget cuts are seeing the most job losses. Budget slashing at the state level is stalling growth and reducing GDP.

Supplementing that argument are the employment totals for just the month of March. Ohio, which is led by austerity-happy Gov. John Kasich (R), lost 9,500 jobs. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) saw his state drop 8,600 jobs. And Wisconsin dropped 4,500 last month.

The era of austerity clearly hasn’t worked. Instead, these statistics show that conservative budgets have made things worse in the states where they were supposedly going to turn economies around.

Our guest blogger is Karla Walter, a Senior Policy Analyst with the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Senate is expected to vote tomorrow on whether to block a commonsense rule that creates a standard process for union elections and gives workers a fairer way of choosing whether to form a union. Unions boost incomes for all middle-class households — union and nonunion alike — so this vote is an attack not just on workers who would like to join a union, but on the entire middle class.

The new rule is needed because there is currently no limit on employers’ or unions’ ability to demand a pre-election hearing on most any issue, which can be used to delay an election. Workers who want a union too often give up due to these delays. According to research by John-Paul Ferguson of Stanford Business School, 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for an election, the election does not end up happening.

The National Labor Relations Board issued the rule last winter. Now, Senate Republicans and their conservative allies are bending the facts on what the rule does to suit their argument.

Katherine Lugar of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which petitioned the Senate for a vote on the rule, claims that it will have a “dramatic effect on American businesses’ ability to grow jobs.” But the idea that workers’ rights and the NLRB are causing our economic problems is absurd. Unions are a shrinking factor in the economy, and when they were at their strongest, the U.S. economy was at its strongest. Moreover, the NLRB has been around for more than 75 years, during which the United States experienced tremendous investment and job growth.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), the main sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 36 to block the union elections rule, is claiming it will “force employees to make the critical decision about whether or not to form a union in as little as seven to 10 days.” But this is just plain wrong. The rule does not specify a time frame for elections, but rather it helps ensure that workers who want a union election get one by addressing roadblocks that commonly are thrown up when the NLRB attempts to set up an election.

Enzi’s inaccurate claims don’t stop there. He also asserts that employers will be required to turn over workers’ email addresses and phone numbers to union organizers under the new rule. This is generally a good idea that allows organizers to communicate using modern technology, but it’s not a requirement of the final rule. A draft version of the regulations did consider these provisions, but the National Labor Relations Board did not include them.

Mitt Romney, despite professing the belief that his economic plan “can’t be scored,” still insists he will be able to balance the federal budget while cutting taxes 20 percent across the board. The Associated Press today noted that Romney’s tax plan, combined with his insistence on increasing the Pentagon budget, means that he would have to cut more than 20 percent out of discretionary spending programs in order to achieve his goals:

At issue are these programs, just to name a few: health research; NASA; transportation; homeland security; education; food inspection; housing and heating subsidies for the poor; food aid for pregnant women; the FBI; grants to local governments; national parks; and veterans’ health care.

Romney promises to immediately cut them by 5 percent. But they would have to be cut more than 20 percent to meet his overall budget goals, assuming veterans’ health care is exempted. It’s almost unthinkable that lawmakers would go along with cuts of such magnitude for air traffic control and food inspection or to agencies like NASA, the FBI, Border Patrol and the Centers for Disease Control.

“It’s just not sustainable,” said GOP lobbyist Jim Dyer. “What do you want to do with the national parks? Which ones do you want to close?”

So Romney’s plan would lavish tax breaks on the richest Americans and increase already sky-high defense spending, while gutting some of the core functions of government: public safety, education, and infrastructure. As the Economic Policy Institute noted, the current level of domestic discretionary spending — which is comprised of the programs listed above, among many others — “is 4 percent of GDP, about equal to the historical average since the early 1960s.” Last week, Romeney orchestrated an event with some “real Americans,” who told him it might be necessary to raise their taxes, rather than cut priorities like education.

During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated”:

ESPUELAS: What do you mean by economic security? Regardless of who the ultimate nominee is, what’s the general idea that the RNC, or the Republican party in general, has in terms of this message?

FRANCESCHI: Well, it’s a message of being able to attain the American dream. It’s less government spending, which a Tarrance Group poll, came out last week actually, shows that the majority of Hispanics believe that less government spending is the way out of this deficit crisis. It’s lowering taxes so small businesses can grow and they can employ more people, because we understand that the private sector is the engine of the economy. It’s not the government. [...]

ESPUELAS: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? And the reason I ask that is because there’s some analysis now that is being published talking about the Bush years being the slowest period of job creation since those statistics were created. Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?

FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.

Listen here:

As a result of the Bush economic platform, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion,” while “overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.” Meanwhile, the deficit and debt exploded. It would have to be quite the update for the GOP to make anything better happen this time around.

The disappearance of mid-level jobs during the Great Recession, along with overall high unemployment, have made it hard for recent college graduates to find good jobs upon leaving school. More than 50 percent of college graduates under age 25 are either jobless or underemployed, according to an analysis from Drexel University and the Economic Policy Institute:

While there’s strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor’s degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Recent graduates are struggling to find mid- and high-level jobs upon graduating and are increasingly turning to jobs in restaurants and retail. As a result, median wages have dropped.

The high jobless and underemployment rate could have long-term consequences for the American economy. Total student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year, and the rate of delinquency on those loans is already disturbingly high. Though college graduates earn significantly more than workers with only a high school diploma, the inability of college graduates to find adequate employment could drive those delinquencies even higher. Worse yet, it could plague more workers with life-long debt, preventing them from forming new households or purchasing more consumer goods.