“The president wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest two percent of Americans. But what that does is it net loses 700,000 more American jobs that are really from people who need those jobs.”

— Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), on Fox News, Nov. 8, 2012

The presidential election is over. Time to get ready for the fiscal cliff!

 The fiscal cliff, of course, is the looming end-of-the-year expiration of the Bush era tax cuts and the automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act. The double whammy would likely sink the economy, though Democrats and Republicans disagree on the best approach for resolving the problem.

For his part, President Obama has long urged retaining the Bush tax cuts for workers making less than $250,000, but letting tax rates (and some other provisions) rise for the wealthiest Americans. Republicans have opposed this, in part because they say it would harm small businesses that organize themselves so earnings or losses are passed though to the shareholders — who then are taxed at the individual tax rate. (We have explored this topic in detail before.)

Rep. Pete Sessions, however, went further, and actually claimed hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs if Obama’s proposed tax increase went into effect. What’s the math behind his claim?