What is driving decisions made by Republicans?

Ray A. Cohn, Las Vegas

Monday, March 14, 2011 | 2:02 a.m.

House Speaker John Boehner is going into his third month of GOP control of the House and still his Republicans have not introduced a job-creation bill. The first bill they considered was a repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law.

But now the Boehner hypocrites have gone into a real war on jobs; not creating them, but eliminating them. Their budget cuts would cost 800,000 jobs, according to the leftist Economic Policy Institute. Centrist economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics calculates 700,000 jobs would be lost by the end of 2012. Goldman Sachs calculates that the Republican budget cuts would slow economic growth by 2 percent.

It makes you wonder if Boehner and his Tea Party-leaning caucus want to slow economic recovery and blame it on Obama to make him a one-term president. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said his prime objective is to make sure Obama does not win re-election. Boehner — who ran as a job creator — said “so be it” if government jobs are lost.

The latest Republican budget cuts are another example of that strategy at the expense of Americans and Nevadans. The state has a 110-megawatt storage facility planned that would power 75,000 NV Energy customers and create 600 jobs. But that and another project require government-guaranteed loans for which House Republicans cut off the funding.

Why? It seems Republicans don’t like renewable energy as well.