Last week, two Senate Democrats joined Senate Republicans to filubuster President Obama’s jobs plan, even though analysts have found that it could add 1.9 million jobs next year. Now, Democratic lawmakers have decided to introduce Obama’s plan piece-by-piece, beginning with Obama’s $35 billion aid package “to help state and local governments provide funding for teachers, police officers and firefighters” that would create or save about 400,000 jobs.

The first measure will be well received by the public, as a new CNN poll found that, for the past two months, about 75 percent of the American people support this measure:

The poll also shows that 72 percent support increasing federal spending for roads, bridges, and schools; 60 percent support increasing federal aid to the unemployed; and 76 percent support increasing the tax rate of those who make more than one million dollars a year — all positions that Republicans are dead set against. “I’ll bring this bill for a vote as soon as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said today.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC

Republicans have continually slammed President Obama’s jobs plan, the American Jobs Act, as a second stimulus plan that won’t work — ignoring the success of the first stimulus and sticking to their own “job creating” policies that have, in the past, failed to boost job creation and economic growth. And last night, Republicans and two Democrats successfully blocked the Jobs Act from coming to the floor for debate, despite it winning majority approval from the full Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has led the charge against the Jobs Act and did so again yesterday, saying on the Senate floor that Republicans welcomed the chance to vote against it. But while McConnell was leading his party’s obfuscation, a coalition of grassroots organizations brought unemployed Washington residents to the Hart Senate Office Building to urge lawmakers to pass the Jobs Act.

The Rev. Paul Sherry held a prayer vigil among the groups in Hart’s atrium, where he and others spoke out about the need for the Jobs Act. “It is time, long past time, to rebuild our nation’s economy in the interest of justice, and compassion, and fairness for all our nation’s people, rather than a favored few,” Sherry said. “The American Jobs Act does all those things.”

The prayer vigil was followed by testimonials from multiple unemployed District residents. “I feel useless, I don’t have anything to do,” a tearful Linda Evans told the crowd of about 50. Evans, an unemployed home health assistant, has been out of that field for three years and recently lost her job working with children. “We are the people,” she said. “And we need jobs.”

Andre Henson, an unemployed 23-year-old who said he has applied for dozens of jobs over the last year, said he was tired of hearing lawmakers talk about how hard it is for the unemployed. “They talk about it, and I live it,” he said. “I live it every single day. Lying in bed asleep at night, wondering how I’m going to provide for my daughter. We helped the congressmen and senators get in office, and it’s time for them to help us.”

Watch video of McConnell’s criticism of the bill and from the gathering yesterday:

From there, the participants broke into smaller groups and went upstairs, visiting offices of senators who had pledged to oppose the bill. In office after office, staffers told the unemployed that they would relay their stories on to the senators, and a staffer in Sen. Mark Kirk’s (R-IL) office reminded them, rather flippantly, “It’s definitely tough times.”

But hours later, the Republican caucus stood uniformly against the Jobs Act, blocking it from coming to the floor for a vote it likely would have passed.

Hopes were not high today for this month’s jobs report after the economy appeared to net exactly zero jobs in August. While the numbers beat expectations, the story behind them reveals a pervasive trend in public sector job loss that Republicans seem committed to ignoring.

In August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the private sector added 17,000 jobs, but the public sector lost the exact same number (those numbers have since been revised). This month, the private sector created 137,000 jobs, but the public sector continued to hemorrhage jobs, losing 34,000. As Matt Yglesias notes, “month after month we see a labor market that’s basically treading water primarily because government employment is shrinking rather than keeping pace with population growth.”

Political Correction charted the plummeting public sector growth next to the steady rise in private sector jobs over the past two years. While the private sector marked a net gain of 1.4 million jobs, budget cuts have eliminated 572,000 government jobs. If governments maintained the same employment rate since 2009, “the economy would have grown by about 2 million jobs”:

This trend of public job depletion puts the Republican jobs agenda in stark contrast with the administration’s approach. President Obama’s American Jobs Act would not only add 1.9 million jobs next year, but makes targeted investments to arrest the trend in layoffs. The plan includes $35 billion in direct state aid infusion that will “prevent up to 280,000 layoffs of teachers, who are — along with cops and firefighters — particularly vulnerable to local government budget shortfalls.”

However, Republicans continue to block Obama’s much-needed plan because, in part, they see public job loss as a positive. As Yglesias points out, “this shrinkage is exactly what conservatives claim to believe will spark growth once they bring the era of Kenyan Anticolonialism to an end.” Buying into the conservative campaign against government workers, Republicans governors like Chris Christie (NJ) and Rick Scott (FL) openly tout laying off thousands of workers as a badge of honor. Scott actually bragged about getting rid of 15,000 jobs in his state. In talking up his draconian budget cuts, Scott admitted that his “biggest cut” is “always people.”

However loud Republicans sing about the shrinking public sector, plummeting public job numbers have failed to deliver on the promise of “private sector magic” — and the economy will continue to suffer for it.

Ever since President Obama released his jobs plan earlier this month, Republicans have been claiming that it will not the help the economy. “What the president’s proposed so far is not serious. And it’s not a jobs plan,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “I just don’t think that is really going to help our economy the way it should,” added Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). Many Republicans derided the plan as a “second stimulus,” ignoring the success of the first.

However, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, the jobs plan that President Obama introduced would help prevent a double-dip recession by boosting economic growth and bringing down unemployment next year:

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

Though they weren’t overly optimistic that the plan would lead to loads of new hires, the economists said that the plan “prevents a serious drag on the economy next year.” The White House has expressed a desire to have a vote on the jobs plan take place next month, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said that the plan will not come up for a vote until the Senate votes on a bill that would crack down on China’s currency manipulation.