Former McCain adviser: GOP budget cuts would cost 700,000 jobs

The GOP finally has a jobs plan. Too bad it's a plan to kill jobs:

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

The report, by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.

Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.

Although Zandi helped shape the stimulus plan, he's not partisan. In fact, during the 2008 election, he served as an economic adviser to John McCain. And as Greg Sargent points out, Zandi's analysis mirrors a similar one by Goldman Sachs last week.

Although there's no doubt Republicans will ignore Zandi's analysis like Goldman Sachs' before it, the bottom line is that immediate austerity hurts the economy and does nothing for long-term deficit reduction. In other words, the GOP's economic plan is to kill jobs and ignore long-term debt.