Most of Washington — including a number of Democrats — can’t be bothered to lift a finger for the 99 Percent. In fact, they demand ever-greater sacrifices from the 99 Percent to fund larger tax cuts for the super-rich. Fortunately, Keith Ellison and the Progressive Caucus are different. Ellison is a chief sponsor of a bill that would create over 5 million jobs.

The plan proposed by Ellison and the Progressive Caucus rejects the foolish Washington consensus that austerity will somehow restore the economy. That’s pure nonsense — in fact, it will be an enormous drag on our economy. Instead, we need to invest heavily in stimulating the economy. Here are a few of the bill’s proposals and their estimated impacts on the economy:

• Enacting the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act sponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) would boost employment by approximately 1.1 million jobs in each of fiscal years 2012 and 2013.
• Reinstating the Making Work Pay tax credit for 2012 and 2013 would boost employment by 409,000 in fiscal 2012 and 532,000 jobs in fiscal 2013.
• Defusing the automatic spending cuts currently scheduled under the Budget Control Act would boost employment by more than 1.1 million jobs in fiscal 2013. [Economic Policy Institute]

That last point is the most important. Researchers at Goldman Sachs have estimated that short-sighted austerity measures will cost us a full percentage point in terms of GDP growth next year. It is pure insanity that we’re planning policies that would cost us over a million jobs in the middle of a recession. Ellison’s bill fixes that.