On Monday, I showed that as the private sector jobs has been adding jobs, the public sector has been losing them by the hundreds of thousands. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that without public-sector austerity, the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point lower:

The Labor Department’s establishment survey of employers — the jobs count that it bases its payroll figures on — shows that the government has been steadily shedding workers since the crisis struck, with 586,000 fewer jobs than in December 2008. Friday’s employment report showed the cuts continued in April, with 15,000 government jobs lost….

The unemployment rate would be far lower if it hadn’t been for those cuts: If there were as many people working in government as there were in December 2008, the unemployment rate in April would have been 7.1%, not 8.1%. [Wall Street Journal, via Jared Bernstein]

And yet the Tea Party Republicans have spent the last four years screaming that government is too big and demanding that we lay off more and more teachers.

Thanks, conservatives! Your disconnect from reality, extremist ideology, and insane knee-jerk hatred of everything President Obama touches have prevented our economy from recovering — just like you wanted.

Republicans in the Senate yesterday filibustered a bill to keep borrowing costs down for college students. They’ll only agree to help students if they can eliminate programs that help others, so they filibustered the Democrats’ bill that would have paid for keeping student loan rates low by ending a payroll that lets the wealthy avoid paying payroll taxes. 

But this is a ridiculous debate in the first place. Have you noticed that we only have battles over paying to help the lowly 99 Percent? Republicans don’t believe we need to pay for hundreds of billions in tax breaks for the super-rich, but they insist that any help for students must be paid for by sacrifices from others who are struggling to get by.

I have a better idea — how about we stop helping those who don’t need help, and start helping those who do?

The State Senate approved the Vikings stadium last night, making its final passage all but certain. In the process, they eliminated certain provisions in the House bill that made the deal at least palatable. The Senate’s version of the Vikings bill is a sweetheart deal for the Vikings and billionaire Zygi Wilf. A few of the differences include:

• The House upped the Vikings’ contribution to $532 million; the Senate set it at $452 million.
• The House provided for shared naming-rights revenues between the team and the public; the Senate gives all that revenue to the Vikings.
• The House made cost overruns the responsibility of the team; the Senate will make operating cost overruns the responsibility of the public.

The naming-rights revenue has always been one of the most infuriating parts of the deal for me. The public builds a brand new stadium for a team, and they immediately turn around and leverage our investment into a private payday worth over $100 million. It really dramatizes the point that the taxpayers are directly subsidizing hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for these privately-owned teams.

Nevertheless, I expect the bill that emerges from the conference committee will look more like the Senate’s version than the House’s. Legislators have come too far, and given in to too many Vikings demands, to play hardball now.

In fact, it appears legislators are eager to get the deal done and take credit for it. I’ve been struck by the large margins the stadium has passed by in both houses — 15 votes in the House and 10 votes in the Senate. Earlier this week, I had predicted it would pass by a single vote, with vulnerable legislators allowed to take cover once passage was assured. The fact that the margins were significantly higher indicates to me that legislators actually think the voters will reward them for this deal.

I think our legislators are sorely mistaken; the voters will not reward this sweetheart deal for Zygi Wilf. But regardless, Wilf will get his deal, and I suspect it will be a very lucrative one for him.

Well, at least they passed something:

The Minnesota House has passed a $496 million package of public construction projects.

Today’s vote of 99 - 32 sent the bonding bill on to the Senate.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t seem overly excited. But our economy is still struggling — thanks to public-sector austerity — and our government is once again failing us. This is the smallest bonding bill passed in Minnesota in two decades.

Yeah, it’s better than nothing. But just barely. We desperately need a real stimulus; when will our policymakers learn that austerity doesn’t work?

We owe our schools over $2 billion, but last night the House voted to approve a $1 billion Vikings stadium with a surprisingly large margin:

After a dreadful 3-13 record on the field in 2011, the Minnesota Vikings received some good off-field news well before the 2012 team begins to practice.

The House voted 73-58 to support a $975 million stadium plan that would provide a new facility to house the team. Forty DFL members and 33 Republicans voted yes. Thirty-seven Republicans and 21 DFLers voted against the bill.

This is a serious case of misplaced priorities. I agree with Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL-Roseville), who voted against the bill:

“If we’re going to raise money or taxes of any sort, why doesn’t it go to education or health care or the other things that have been cut or that we owe money to,” Greiling said. “I don’t understand the priority tonight of voting for a stadium that a lot of people will not even be able to afford tickets to go to.”

Our policymakers won’t raise taxes to properly fund education. They’d sooner slash access to healthcare than raise new revenues. But raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a privately-owned football franchise gets bipartisan support. I don’t believe Minnesotans share our legislators’ warped priorities.

We know austerity doesn’t work. We can easily observe that fact from what’s going on around the world right now. Britain, for example, one of the greatest champions of austerity under the leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron, is now back in recession, and is actually faring worse than it did during the Great Depression. Here at home, austerity is also failing us.

The private sector in America is steadily gaining jobs. The public sector, though, has been hemorrhaging jobs. The graph below shows an index of private jobs (the blue line) and public jobs (the red line), compared to their baseline levels in February 1st, 2009, the start of Obama’s first full month in office. The private sector has gained jobs under Obama, but the public sector has lost big time.

This is what the right wants, and what they howl they’re not getting from Obama, despite his complete capitulation to their demands in actual fact. And it’s killing our economy. Not only has it cost us over 600,000 jobs directly, it’s certainly caused the loss of tens of thousands more indirectly.

Every employed worker — no matter what sector they work in — means increased consumer demand and a stronger economy. Massive government layoffs mean hundreds of thousands of workers who can no longer contribute to the economy. It’s like we’re trying to drive the economy forward with one foot on the gas and the other on the break.

Today, with any luck, the big questions of this legislative session will finally be answered. There should be at least two big votes in the legislature today, and depending on the results, negotiations over the final outcome of the session may go on for a few days. Here’s what to watch for.

Does Governor Dayton’s Vikings plan have the votes?

After years of lobbying for their millions, Zygi Wilf and the Vikings will finally get an up-or-down vote. Speaker Kurt Zellers has said he doesn’t think they have a majority; the Vikings insist they do. Since legislators are starting to fall into line, I suspect the Vikings have found the votes. Given the political sensitivity of the issue, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pass by a single vote, with a few legislators held in reserve but allowed to vote no once the magic number has been reached.

Will the GOP’s corporate tax giveaway make another appearance?

Dayton vetoed the MNGOP’s top priority for the session — an irresponsible, budget-busting, corporate tax giveaway. I would be surprised if the Republicans let it go at that, and I expect to see another form of the tax bill find its way to the Governor’s desk.

Will the GOP hold one of Dayton’s priorities for ransom?

On a related note, I wonder if either the Vikings bill or the bonding bill will be held ransom for Governor Dayton’s signature on the GOP tax bill. They don’t sound willing to give it up without a fight, and it would be easy for a handful of Republicans to scuttle either bill — or both — while making it clear that they’ll change their votes once an agreement is made.

Such a maneuver would lead to intense negotiations between the Governor and the leaders in the legislature. That means today might not be the end of the session. At the very least, though, we’re in the endgame, and we’ll have a much better sense of how everything will play out after today’s votes.

Here’s some good news to end the week: Governor Dayton has vetoed a GOP tax bill that would have increased Minnesota’s budget deficit. The bill would have used fraudulent accounting maneuvers to make the budget appear balanced on paper, a practice which deserved a veto even if the bill itself were good policy.

In his veto message [PDF], the Governor specifically cited the bill’s fiscal irresponsibility:

This bill would not pay for the business property tax levy freeze and other tax breaks. It would reduce the Budget Reserve for the current biennium and add another $145 million to the deficit projected for the next biennium, which is already projected to be $1.1 billion. Freezing the state business levy would reduce state revenues by a total of $2.3 billion between 2013 and 2026.

My biggest concern was that the Governor might relent on the GOP tax bill to get a Vikings stadium passed, so I’m very happy about this report from MPR:

Dayton said he’s willing to negotiate an alternative tax bill with Republicans, as long as it doesn’t add future debt. [Emphasis added]

Great news! Thank you once again, Governor Dayton, for standing for fiscal responsibility and against the GOP’s irresponsible tax giveaways.

In case you haven’t been paying close attention, allow me to quickly summarize the last week of news out of the legislature:

Vikings Vikings Vikings Vikings Vikings Vikings Vikings Vikings

Meanwhile, the economy remains precarious, but though construction season is well underway, the bonding bill has been placed on the back burner. It should have been passed two months ago. Whatever happens with the Vikings stadium, it’s no substitute for a real bonding bill that would create tens of thousands of jobs and make important investments in our state. The legislature should be putting jobs first.

Finally, though, there’s a bit of progress. Unfortunately, it appears legislators have agreed on a bonding bill that’s half as large as it should be:

[Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker] insisted the bonding bill will remain at $496 million, a figure the four legislative leaders and Capital Investment experts agreed upon.

The deal comes after DFL House members repeatedly criticized Republicans for putting forward a bill that didn’t spend enough and didn’t have DFL input.

Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, said she’s pleased with the changes. She said Democrats made the decision to support the bill even if it didn’t meet their initial expectations. She said a smaller bill is better than no bill at all.

I agree that creating half the jobs we possibly could is better than creating no jobs. But you know what’s even better? Creating all the jobs.

I guess I should be happy that there will be a bonding bill at all, given the MNGOP’s aversion to jobs legislation and the Capitol’s fixation on the Vikings. I can’t help feeling, though, like this is a major missed opportunity.