Dana Milbank: Why not check your facts

In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank makes the case that the Republicans do not care that their proposed cuts to spending for the remainder of 2011 will lead to increased unemployment and possibly a return to recession. Dana -- CHECK YOUR FACTS! You got it all wrong.

Milbank says that he "checked with budget expert Scott Lilly of the Center for American Progress, and, using the usual multipliers, he calculated that the cuts - a net of $59 billion in the last half of fiscal 2011 - would lead to the loss of 650,000 government jobs, and the indirect loss of 325,000 more jobs as fewer government workers travel and buy things. That's nearly 1 million jobs - possibly enough to tip the economy back into recession."

So let's get this straight. According to the government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government has just over 2 million employees. That means that according to Milbank, a cut of $59 billion dollars of spending will lead to the layoff of one third of all federal employees. (These figures exclude the military). Strangely, a cut of $59 billion dollars would be a spending reduction of about one and a half percent of the total federal spending. So we cut spending by 1.5% and that means laying off 33% of all federal workers.

Of course, this gives rise to the following question: How dumb is Dana Milbank or, alternatively, how dumb does he think the American people are? Milbank knows that his numbers are not even close to correct, but he uses them anyway. The editors of the Washington Post know that Milbank's numbers are not close to correct, but they use them anyway. The numbers are so far off that even were the cuts to the federal budget to come only from salaries (which is of course not true), there still would not be anything close to layoffs in the numbers that Milbank ominously announces.

Milbank should be ashamed of putting this nonsense out for the public to read. He is either incredibly lazy or just plain dishonest. Take your pick, but either way, realize that the man's articles are not worth reading.