The negative attention garnered by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) assertion that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and “monstrous lie” to America’s youth apparently wasn’t enough to keep his fellow Republican presidential candidates from making similar claims about other proposed programs. Speaking at an education forum hosted by News Corporation and the College Board in New York last night, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich nodded to Perry while calling President Obama’s proposed plan to help college graduates who are buried under student loan debt a “Ponzi scheme” that will “bankrupt the country,” CNN’s Ashley Killough reports:

Gingrich, however, called for the privatization of the student-loan program, arguing the president’s plan would bankrupt the country “by promising to every young person, ‘You won’t have to pay off your student loan as a student.’”

He said the plan appeals to students now, but by the time they will “have to pay off the national debt” as taxpayers when they’re older, Obama will be long gone.

“It’s a Ponzi scheme even by Gov. Perry’s standards,” Gingrich said, also making a quip referring to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who’s repeatedly described Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.

Obama’s plan, which would lower monthly repayment costs for millions of college graduates, has been met with resistance from congressional Republicans and presidential candidates alike. Still, Gingrich’s attack is truly bizarre, given that nothing about the plan even remotely resembles a Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, American student loan debt is expected to surpass $1 trillion this year, a record high that amounts to more than Americans owe in collective credit card debt. The issue has been one of the driving forces behind the 99 Percent Movement, as student debt has piled up due to rising tuition costs at both public and private colleges and universities.

Even in the face of those numbers, the opposition shouldn’t be shocking, as Republicans continue support policies that make it harder for low- and middle-income Americans to attend college. The GOP opposed efforts to reform the federal student loan program, demagoguing changes that ended the practice of letting banks act as unnecessary middlemen in the federal loan process as a “Washington takeover” of the student loan industry. And after including massive cuts to the Pell Grant program in their budget, party leaders now argue that such grants actually make it more expensive to go to college, claims that are demonstrably false.

House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.

Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.

And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:

“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”

According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.