Republican corruption by the numbers, Part 4: Employment and the economy

Here's the latest installment of quantified GOP depravity, as catalogued in the report on Republican corruption released last week by the Democrats on the House Rules Committee. You can read Part 1, on health care, here; Part 2, on energy policy, here; and Part 3, on national security, here.

Let's take a look at how things are going for people who actually work for a living:

5.2 million

Number of Americans who said in December 2005 that they wanted jobs but couldn't find one.
---------------------


30,000

Number of American workers to be laid off by Ford in connection with 14 plant closings.
---------------------


$250 million

Taxes saved by Ford during the same year, by routing offshore earnings back into the US under a loophole in the 2004 Republican tax bill, called the "American Jobs Creation Act."
---------------------


$1.6 million

Cost to multinationals such as Pfizer, Hewlett-Packard, and Altria for the lobbying that led to the passage of the "Jobs Creation Act" loophole.
---------------------


$3.05

Average hourly wage of a Chinese garment factory worker.
---------------------


$8

Average hourly wage of an American garment factory worker.
---------------------


234

Number of co-sponsors of a 2000 bill to prevent garments produced produced by foreign workers in labor camps in the Marianas from having a "Made in the USA" label and entering the US duty-free, before the bill was blocked by Republican Tom DeLay and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
---------------------


$400 million

US taxes avoided annually by Tyco by moving its corporate headquarters, and nothing more, to tax haven Bermuda, under a legal loophole called "corporate inversion."
---------------------


$227 million

Amount of federal contracts received by Tyco in 2001.
---------------------


$1.7 million

Amount Tyco paid Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, through an intermediary who was a former member of Alberto Gonzales' White House Counsel staff, to lobby the White House for continuation of the tax break for off-shore corporations.
---------------------


$10 billion

Amount of a Homeland Security contract awarded to Bermuda-incorporated Accenture, another beneficiary of "corporate inversion," to screen visitors to the US, after passing on bids by two other American based, American tax-paying companies.
---------------------

Next: Education.