Jul 29, 2011 5 min read

There’s a funny disconnect between the ongoing debt debate in Washington and what’s happening here in Pennsylvania.

Now, it’s not exactly mind blowing (or all that novel) to suggest that politicians aren’t really aware of what us regular folk are going through. (Being regular folk is like being above average: everyone says they are.)

At the risk of oversimplification, one of our two parties (the Grand Old one, to be exact) feels that we mustn’t raise any taxes on the immensely wealthy since they are the “job creators.” That leaves the rest of us non-immensely wealthy folk (statistically speaking, that’s you and the other 99 percent of us) to shoulder serious cuts to programs and services that most of us use, even if we don’t readily realize it or admit it.

These austerity measures are important, we’re told, because our national debt has gotten out of hand. So Republicans are using the raising of the debt ceiling (an innocuous act done 78 times since 1960) as an opportunity to extort serious spending cuts that they feel are vital.

Here’s the thing — actually, here are several things.

Most people faced with a debt problem would cut spending and look for extra income, say a part-time job. That’s essentially what the president has been pushing for all along. But the supposed reason we can’t do the “balanced” approach of the Democrats is because balance means joining more modest cuts with increased revenue and that means raising taxes on those “job creators.” The last thing we need, Republicans say, is to be stalling job creation and economic growth in these current economic times.

But here’s the rub: the thing about the austerity measures that the GOP is pushing is that in addition to tamping down spending, austerity measures also smother economic growth. Guess what we need right now? You guessed it, economic growth. With unemployment still sky-high and the economy looking like Rocky late in the film’s come-from-behind fight scene, the last thing we need is to slow what gains we’ve made. (That is, unless you’re counting on a cruddy economy helping you win a presidential election in a year or two. Just saying.)

The other thing is that while these cuts may look good in the short term, they’re job killers in the long term. This is especially true in Pennsylvania. As we have all heard, the Marcellus shale is going to bring an economic boom to the commonwealth, bring billions to lease owners, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and, just maybe, give us all minty fresh breath and make thousands of julienne fries. It could also, depending on who you ask, result in our environmental destruction, ushering in a Mad Max-esque dystopia. (You know, either/or.)

Whoever is correct (the smart money is, as always, on somewhere in between), the tapping of the shale industry means jobs. (Again, how many jobs are created depends on who you ask.) The problem is, as you might have noticed from the influx of Texas license plates in the last year or so, that these jobs aren’t necessarily going to Pennsylvanians. That’s because, for the most part, Pennsylvanians don’t have the training or education needed to be hired. So we have all these jobs being filled by those from out of state.

Now, that’s not entirely unsurprising. Of course a state like Texas, where the gas industry has been drilling for years, would have a more readily available supply of qualified workers. They’ve got a head start on us, to be sure. So how do we catch up? How do we ensure that these jobs being created by drilling in Pennsylvania go to people who live in Pennsylvania?

With education. Specifically with programs aimed at training them for the industry’s needs. But that costs money and is the exact kind of long-term programs that would be gutted by the GOP austerity measures. Those that aren’t gutted face elimination, which is what will happen to 43 education programs if the Republicans get their way. Among the programs up for execution in the myopic pursuit of short-term savings at the cost of long term gains is Reading Is Fundamental, a public-private partnership that puts books in the hands of low-income children. (You know, because nobody needs to know how to read to get a job.)

With all the focus on ensuring we don’t “kill jobs” by taxing the rich, it sure would be nice if there was some concern about killing jobs by gutting the programs and education needed to ensure people can fill those jobs. The Marcellus shale is just one (albeit enormous) example of the need for education to field a hire-able workforce.

More education means less unemployment. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for people who never graduated from high school is 14.2 percent, it’s 9.6 percent for those with just a high school diploma and only 4.9 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree. At the top end, those with master’s degrees have a 3.4 percent unemployment rate and those with doctorates have a 2.0 percent.

Even if you accept that not taxing the rich is crucial for creating jobs, the rest of us are the ones who have to be qualified to fill them. We can’t do that with myopic austerity measures. It’s another reason (along with, you know, common sense) that we need a balanced solution to the debt crisis.

If you’d like to argue that letting corporations keep benefiting from tax loopholes is more important than kids learning how to read, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.