The proposed GOP continuing resolution decimating community health centers would truly be a job killer, says the Center for American Progress:
It’s easy to boast about cutting inflated government programs but quite a different story when you take a good look behind the rhetoric. Take the recent cuts proposed to our nation’s community health centers. Policymakers need to remember they promised to do more than cut government spending—they also promised to create good jobs. Repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the new funding it provides to community health centers will eliminate nearly 300,000 jobs in 2015. We estimate that when the proposed budget cuts in funding for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year are combined with health center funds lost through repeal of the Affordable Care Act, more than 178,000 jobs would be lost this year alone....
The fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution currently being debated in the House of Representatives would slash the health center funding to levels not seen for over a decade. The proposed legislation would cut $1 billion from the FY 2010 baseline funding ($2.1 billion) for community health centers. In the absence of the extra investment mandated under the Affordable Care Act—but that the House just voted to eliminate—this would reduce funding to the 2000-01 level. If existing health centers have to cut their budgets nearly in half, they would have no choice but to institute immediate layoffs. Our analysis of this cut found this would result in the loss of more than 178,000 jobs.
Not to mention the drastic reduction in provision of actual healthcare services.
How big is the cut? On paper, House Republicans propose to reduce clinic funding from current levels by $1 billion, or roughly a third of their total federal funding. Calculating the precise impact of those cuts is tricky, because the clinics are presently drawing money from different federal sources and funding has increased in the last few years. But, based on estimates from the Senate Appropriations Committee and the National Association of Community Health Centers, it sounds like more than 100 clinics could close and more than 1000 clinics could reduce services, leaving around 3 million people without a regular source of affordable health care.
Apparently, since low-income people don't count as Americans for the GOP, the jobs created to help low-income people don't count, either.
For more on the work that integral role that community health center have in the provision of care in the U.S., see DrSteveB's diary from a few days ago.