Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) nose grew pretty long after making a statement on the sequestration during a Senate floor speech Tuesday, if Washington Post has anything to say about it.
Reid claimed the sequestration — a last-ditch measure of automatic spending cuts — cut more than 1.6 million jobs, arguing the March 1 budget slashes have quelled job creation.
“We have learned that the sequestration already has cut 1.6 million jobs. So we need job creation. We need to help the middle class by creating jobs,” Reid said.
But as The Post’s Fact Checker discovered, the Senate Majority Leader couldn’t be more off the mark.
Though the sequester did lead to many federal agencies having their budgets slashed — causing furloughs for federal works, cutbacks to government contractors and reductions in government services — the damage isn’t nearly as bad as Reid suggested.
The Washington Post analyzed Reid’s comment, speculating his 1.6 million jobs figure derived from a report from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf wrote if the sequester were cancelled, it would boost employment between 300,000 and 1.6 million in the 2014 fiscal year.
But CBO’s 1.6 million projection is the maximum in that wide range, and, as the Post said, it’s an estimate for next year, not this fiscal year — which ends Sept. 30. And there isn’t an exact estimate for how many jobs were lost during the sequester.
According to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, the real effects of the cuts may not have been felt yet. He told the Christian Science Monitor that in 2013, roughly 250,000 jobs would be lost — substantially less than Reid’s 1.6 million.
“Job growth has come down a notch, but only a notch,” Zandi told the Christian Science Monitor.
Still, Reid’s comments earned him four Pinocchio’s from The Post, which recommended Reid use a more modest and factually accurate number like 900,000 — the first employment number from the CBO’s report.
“While the dust has not settled on the impact of the sequester on employment this year, the available evidence shows that Reid’s claim that 1.6 million jobs already have been cut this year appears wildly off course,” the newspaper said.
Sorry Sen. Reid, looks like some research may have been in order.
