Republican Budget Cuts Will Hurt Economy, says Goldman Sachs

The House Republicans have passed legislation cutting $61 billion from the federal budget, trimming programs that conservatives hate, like the SEC, EPA, Head Start, Planned Parenthood, etc. They claim that they are making these cuts to strengthen the nation's finances, but not only are their cuts ridiculously small compared to this year's deficit ($1.5 trillion), their actions will hurt the economy, making future deficits worse. From today's New York Times editorial,"The Budget Fight Continues":

In a recent report, economists at Goldman Sachs estimated that the House cuts would reduce economic growth by 1.5 percentage points to 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of 2011. That would devastate employment. As a rule of thumb, each percentage point drop in growth means a loss of 1.2 million jobs.