Live Blog

Rob Christensen puts his sights this morning on the governor’s outrageous claim that the House budget will lead to 30,000 layoffs. He first shows that the GOP leadership and the Budget and Tax Center agree the budget eliminates 18,000 positions. He explains, too, that about 3,000 of those positions are vacant. Then he pops the Governor’s education jobs bubble, explaining that 30 percent of her claimed job losses are already vacant.

It would have been even more valuable if Christensen had gone on to acknowledge that even filled positions can be eliminated without laying people off. There is a great deal of natural attrition in the government workforce – retirements, moves across state lines, transfers to the private sector, or returns to school – that would mean less need to force government workers out the door. Republican leaders say they expect about 5,000 state government workers will lose their jobs, with some overlap between their budget and the governor’s earlier budget proposal.