For quite some time now it’s been an obvious and wide-held belief that passing a new surface transportation bill is the best opportunity for job-creation available to our country – if we do it right, we will create 8 million jobs over six years and make a real dent in the $2.2 trillion hole facing our roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure needs.

So, in a way, you have to hand it to the House Republican leadership. Last week, they somehow found a way to unveil a new highway bill proposal that actually kills jobs – more than 490,000 construction jobs and 141,000 related transit jobs in the first year alone. Their proposal is so backward, so wrong-headed, so bad for the country that it’s hard to believe anyone could take it seriously.

How did Boehner, Cantor, Ryan and the rest pull this off? Simply put, instead of trying to create jobs and address needs (as every previous highway bill has done to some extent), they were guided by their allegiance to tea party crazies without regard to economic damage.

The outline released by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica last Thursday is meant to replace the previous Surface Transportation Authorization that expired in 2009. Since then, it’s been extended over and over, nickel-and-diming just enough funding to literally patch potholes, but never tackle anything ambitious.

But it seems patching potholes is just another example of “wasteful spending” to the House GOP leadership anyway. Their proposal cuts investment in our highways and bridges by more than one-third from what it is today. If passed into law, their plan would not only leave us unable to handle the very basics of maintaining our country’s already-crumbling transportation infrastructure, it will affect America’s ability to transport people, move goods and keep up in a highly-competitive global economy. All the while, China will continue to build the superhighways and high-speed rail systems of the future.

This plan deliberately leaves our highways and bridges – once the envy of the world – to rot. It represents nothing less than giving up on America, its history of greatness and its working men and women.

This proposal is one of the most cynical bits of policy to come out of Capitol Hill in a long time. It’s proof positive that the House GOP has divorced itself from reality and from its responsibility to govern the country effectively. It’s also proof that House Republicans are actively trying to avoid doing what they were elected to do: create jobs. In fact, absent any other real jobs’ legislation this session, this scary bill – which slashes jobs, not creates them – would seem to be the GOP’s only plan address our nation’s job crisis.

What do the men and women who build America think about this plan? Those of you who attended our Fight Back for Good Jobs rally at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis already know. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan making it clear what working men and women think of this plan:

Here’s the most important part:

“Their policy is anti-jobs, their policy is anti-investment and their damn policy is anti-American!”

The half-million strong members of LIUNA aren’t about to let this policy become a reality. In the coming months, they’ll be on the front lines fighting for good jobs and fighting to preserve America’s greatness.

We need you to join them – write a letter to the editor of your paper, get involved with groups like Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream, or put pressure on your member of Congress and let them know we need to build America, create good jobs, and leave behind a positive legacy for taxpayers and future generations.