Mitt Romney's Budget Would Destroy Jobs: Report

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has promised to create 12 million jobs if elected president. But a new report has found that his budget proposal actually would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Romney's budget plan would lead to a net loss of 554,000 jobs by 2014, while President Barack Obama's budget plan would lead to the net creation of 1.4 million jobs, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. Moreover, if Romney makes his budget revenue-neutral, as he has promised, then his plan would lead to a net loss of 1.9 million jobs over the next two years, largely because of deep spending cuts, the report found.

Even without revenue neutrality, Romney's plan to slash government spending would destroy roughly 4 million jobs over the next two years, offset only somewhat by his proposed tax cuts and defense budget increases, according to the report. If Romney were to successfully repeal the Affordable Care Act and block grant and cut Medicaid spending, hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, according to the report.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz similarly told Bloomberg TV in June that Romney's proposed spending cuts would "worsen the jobs deficit and significantly increase the likelihood of a recession."

Nor would lost jobs come for the sake of a smaller national debt. According to a recent analysis by Business Insider, Romney's budget plan would increase the deficit, even if the economy grows more than expected.