Last July I posted on the out of control spending in Washington which I post a significant portion of below. beginning with this comment by Joe Biden (remember this is in July):
"The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,"
I then observed how this had become a White House talking point:
... Obama has made the assertion as well, it is how the Administration justifies the fact that unemployment has gone beyond their projections. They are now saying that unemployment will exceed 10% which is at best optimistic.
I will replace the chart I used then with a current one which shows the administrations projections which they used to sell the stimulus plan compared to what has actually happened:
This is through November, December remained at 10%, This does not really tell the entire story. In December over 600,000 people left the work force many if not most because they have given up looking for work,these people are not figured in the unemployment calculations. For this and other reasons the actual unemployment is much higher. But 10% is the official number so we will go with it.
Now back to what I wrote in July:
As you can see they are not to good with numbers. The idea that they underestimated the condition of the economy at the time they made the projections is of course nonsense. How could it have been any worse than the hyperbole that Obama and his minions used to shove the stimulus package through. For example on February 10 Obama pushed his plan by stating:" We're in an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression, and without quick action our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse."
So they are now saying the economy was worse than that? Ridiculous. The truth as anyone with common sense knows is that the stimulus package shoved through congress at a time of "crisis" was primarily intended to reward special interest, promote certain social agendas and basically a gift to themselves (Democrats, this go around) for owning the federal government.
They have continued to reward themselves at the taxpayer's, the taxpayer's children's, the taxpayer's grand children's and generations beyond expense. As bad as the Republicans were at fiscal responsibility our new rulers have taken it to an entire new level;
As I pointed out back in July the idea that the economy was worse than they had expected is not born out by the rhetoric they used to get the stimulus bill through Congress and at that it passed almost entirely along party lines. Lest we forget this is not the first "stimulus" that has been used to try to relieve this recession. Back in the spring of 2008 Bush and congress passed a $350 billion stimulus package which over half consisted of “tax credits” sent out to Americans.
While on the subject of “tax credits” let me point out that a tax credit is not the same as a tax cut. During the State of the Union message Obama seemed to be offended when the Republicans did not applaud when he made his often stated misrepresentation that he had given a tax cut to 95% of Americans. The Republicans can be excused for sitting on their hands since a tax credit in the form of refunds sent out to Americans, many of whom never paid any taxes in the first place, is not the same as a tax rate cut which would lower your taxes permanently.
So we now have spent a trillion plus on trying to stimulate the economy and bring down unemployment not to mention the interest on this money and where are we ? We are at 10% unemployment and it is expected to hover around this for another year at least. So what is their solution?
From the Christian Science Monitor Dec. 19, 2009:
With America's unemployment rate in double digits, the US House on Wednesday narrowly passed a $154 billion jobs bill. The vote was 217 to 212.
The package is not expected to be taken up by the Senate until early next year. But if the legislation is ultimately passed into law, it may produce funding for worker training in high-growth or emerging industries. It could also provide money for municipalities to hire more police and firefighters, and it could create a host of other programs designed to put Americans back to work.
Billions would probably go toward highway construction and mass transit. The House legislation calls for $500 million for airport construction and $800 million for Amtrak.
It is interesting that a bill is passed by the House yet the story describes what it "may do" or "could do" isn't a bill what it will do? So this somewhat mysterious bill is now being pushed on the Senate. The WSJ Sunday January 31, 2010:
WASHINGTON -- The White House on Sunday urged the Senate to pass legislation quickly to stimulate growth in the moribund jobs market, as it ramps up efforts to address bread-and-butter issues important to voters.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," said the administration was seeking a jobs bill that would cost about $100 billion. "The president hopes that the next order of business the Senate will take up is this package," Mr. Gibbs said
A popular definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”.
May I point out that only about a quarter of the “stimulus” which had to be passed to save the country from “an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression” has been spent to date. The excuse for the slow spending of this “stimulus “has been that it was a “two year plan” as they made clear last summer.
Cleveland Plain Dealer on Obama's weekly radio address:
"As a result of the swift and aggressive action we took in the first few months of this year, we've been able to pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink," he said, deflecting calls for a new round of stimulus spending and saying that his plan was intended to work not in a few months but over two years.
Reuters:
The act is intended to cushion some of the blow, not to fully offset the deepest recession since the Great Depression," said Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
"It's a good thing, as the president has stressed, that this is a two-year plan," he said, adding the economy was in a "fragile" stabilization phase.
May I be so bold as to suggest that if the ‘stimulus” package passed last February is not working as promised and they want to have a new “jobs bill” they simply cancel what has already been passed and redirect it towards the new and improved emphasis of job creation. Which I might point out is what they promised it would accomplish in the first place “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
From an interview with Nancy Pelosi in February 2009:
But what if the recovery package fails to fix the economy? What's Plan B?
We know from economists across the spectrum that it will work to stop the downward spiral we are in, because it focuses on job creation. At $800 billion, I feel confident about the bang for the buck we'll get. It's not an ephemeral thing we're doing here, it's not a speech — it's creating jobs. What we don't know — what is uncharted — is how deep this downturn in the economy could become.
What if it turns out to be deeper than expected? What will you say to the American people a year from now, which is the timeline the Obama administration has put forward for achieving results, if we're still in a world of hurt?
We will be accountable. We will answer for this legislation one year from now, about what worked best and where more needs to be done. We won't say, "Well, that's just the economy's fault." No, we will be accountable for the decisions that we make.
"No, we will be accountable for the decisions that we make" Sure thing Nancy we love the accountability you're showing a year later.
Obama SOTU fact check from The AP:
OBAMA: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. ... And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year."
THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.
The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million "compared with what those values would have been otherwise." It said the ranges "reflect the uncertainty of such estimates." And it added, "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."
The fact that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package." Is why we judge such things by the actual unemployment percentage, to do otherwise is just playing games and trying to fool the public.
To show how absolutely insane this whole stimulus idea is let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Let’s ignore the Bush stimulus and let’s ignore the interest on the debt of the Obama stimulus, further let’s assume that the CBO’s higher number is correct, that the Obama stimulus “saved or created” 1.6 million jobs which would not have been, had we not spent the money.
Let’s further understand that only 25% of the money was actually spent in 2009 about $195 billion. So how much did each of those possible 1.6 million jobs saved or created cost us? $121,875 each! Even if Obama’s number of 2 million is correct (it’s not) that would be $97,500 per job.
Now please consider that the average American makes around $43,000 a year yet we are spending (best case) $97,500 per job. If we had just taken the stimulus money spent in 2009 we could have just given over 4 million unemployed Americans the annual average income of Americans. Do you begin to see the absurdity of this?
Remember we have not figured in either the interest on the debt, previous stimulus and have used the best possible outcome as misrepresented by Obama during his State of the Union Speech. The true cost of this fiasco is both staggering in its size and its stupidity.
So what is the plan now? They want a new stimulus, which they are calling a “jobs bill”. Excuse me but what was all that $780 billion supposed to be for lollipops? Remember the whole shovel ready mantra last year? And now they decide they need to spend even more billions to create jobs.
Folks, if you cannot see that we need a serious change of direction in this country, then we are doomed to crash that train right off the tracks.
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