The closer we examine the House Republican budget plan for 2012 put together by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the worse it looks. Two new analyses show not only would Ryan’s plan to cut Medicaid cost 2 million mostly private-sector jobs, but—and this is scary—if the nation followed Ryan’s budget road map, the federal government would nearly vanish by 2050.

The Republican budget plan unveiled yesterday privatizes Medicare, cuts corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding and repeals health care reform. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Just as Republican governors and state legislators are assaulting the rights of working Americans under the guise of budget crises…Republican leaders in Congress are using the federal budget to further their own political agendas. Their credo is that tax giveaways to the super rich and Wall Street should be paid for on the backs of working people.

When lawmakers—usually with the backing of corporations and right-wing, anti-worker groups—push for so-called right to work laws, they claim it will bring business and jobs to their states. Nothing could be further from the truth, says economist Gordon Lafer.

The Recovery Act’s green investments committed through the end of 2010 created or saved nearly 1 million jobs, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the BlueGreen Alliance. This report provides evidence that the Recovery Act succeeded in responding to the nation’s economic crisis and that green investments create jobs while laying a foundation for the development of a 21st century green economy in the United States.

A new analysis shows workers in states with laws like those proposed in Ohio and Missouri, which supporters misleadingly call “right to work,” have lower wages, whether they belong to a union or not.

With state unemployment at 9.6 percent last month, Ohio legislators should be working overtime to fix the jobs crisis. Instead, the majority leadership in the Ohio Senate is playing partisan politics.

Three years after the Great Recession officially began, nearly 27 million U.S. workers either are jobless or in need of full-time work. At the sluggish rate the economy is creating jobs, it will take up to a decade or more before pre-recession levels of unemployment are restored, according to a new report. 

The economy has changed significantly over the past 30 years, but those changes have not made life better for  low- and middle-income Americans. In the latest edition of “The State of Working America,” Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economists point out that while the American workforce is larger, more diverse, and better educated than ever before, income growth has been slow and inequality has grown.

Here’s some news that gets buried in the normal the-sky-is-falling Social Security coverage. Although the weak economy is having a short-term impact on Social Security’s finances, Social Security is still projected to run an $868 billion surplus over the next decade, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue issued a rare joint statement supporting “Obama’s call to create jobs and grow the U.S. economy through investment in our nation’s infrastructure.” Trumka and Donohue said:

Whether it is building roads, bridges, high-speed broadband, energy systems and schools, these projects not only create jobs and demand for businesses, they are an investment in building the modern infrastructure our country needs to compete in a global economy.