this guy has no idea what he is doing....
no, you just have no idea what you're talking about.
Stimulus creates, saves more jobs in June: committee
Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:58pm EDT
Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE56Q4TS20090727)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of jobs created or saved by infrastructure projects funded by the U.S. economic stimulus plan more than doubled in June from May, according to a report released Tuesday by a House of Representatives committee.
At the end of June, 49,377 jobs had been "created or sustained" by water, highway and public transportation projects, compared to slightly more than 21,000 jobs at the end of May.
The Pacific Northwestern state of Washington accounted for the most jobs of any state or territory at 3,481, with the bulk of those concentrated in highway repairs.
According to the Transportation Department, Washington has also been obligated some $627.8 million out of the $22.7 billion the states have requested from the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
President Barack Obama pushed to dedicate $48 billion in the two-year, $787 billion recovery act to transportation projects, in the hopes of allaying painfully high unemployment levels in construction and related work.
A few states and territories, such as Georgia and Guam, have not reported any jobs created or saved by the increased infrastructure spending. Capital works projects have begun everywhere except the territories.
Only 142 capital works have been completed, however, the committee said.
The House committee regularly tracks how stimulus money is distributed to clean water revolving funds, highway infrastructure projects and transit capital assistance and will have a hearing on spending on Friday. Most states have used most of the stimulus money for highway repairs, according to the committee.
A total of 5,079 highway and transit projects have been put out to bid in all 50 states, four territories and the District of Columbia, totaling $16.7 billion, the committee said.
A job counts as created if it did not exist before a stimulus grant was given to a project. A sustained or saved job would have been eliminated if not for stimulus money. The committee does not distinguish between jobs created and saved in its report.
Stimulus cash lifts states, localities
Updated 8/2/2009 11:19 PM
By Dennis Cauchon (http://www.usatoday.com/community/tags/reporter.aspx?id=160), USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-02-stimulus_N.htm)
A huge influx of federal stimulus money to state and local governments more than offset a sharp drop in tax collections, helping to put the brakes on the nation's economic decline, new government data show.
The stimulus funds helped reverse six months of spending declines, pushing state and local government expenditures up 4.8% in the second quarter, reports the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Bureau+of+Economic+Analysis).
"The money has caused a very sharp change in the path of the economy, which had been in steep decline," said Chad Stone, chief economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Center+on+Budget+and+Policy+Priorities) in Washington, D.C. (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Washington,+D.C)
Federal cash is now the No. 1 revenue source for state and local governments, surpassing sales and property taxes, the government data show.
The flood of federal money lifted total revenues by 7.5%, overcoming an 8% drop in tax collections.
State and local governments are adding new workers andraising pay:
• Employment. State and local governments added 12,000 workers, a 0.1% increase, in the quarter, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Bureau+of+Labor+Statistics). The private sector cut 1.3 million jobs, a 1.2% reduction, during this time. Federal employment was flat.
• Compensation. Pay and benefits rose at a 4% annual rate in the second quarter for state and local workers, BLS reports.
For private workers, compensation was up at a 0.8% annual rate, the lowest since the government started keeping track in 1980.
The jump in government spending — federal, state and local — was the key reason that the nation's gross domestic product declined just 1% in the quarter, a sharp improvement from a 6.4% first-quarter drop.
"The stimulus is working as intended," said Stone.
Economist Randall Pozdena said the temporary boost will hurt the economy in the long run because taxes will rise.
"The question is, are you spending money productively?" said Pozdena, managing director of ECONorthwest, a consulting firm in Portland, Ore.
Most of the extra spending in the second quarter went for buildings, highways and other capital projects, said Donald Boyd, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y.
Other state and local spending was flat, after adjusting for inflation.
The stimulus funds let states avoid cuts, rather than increase spending, Boyd said.
U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus
September 2, 2009
By Deborah Soloman (http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=DEBORAH+SOLOMON&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND)
The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125185379218478087.html)
WASHINGTON -- Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades.
But there's little agreement about which programs are having the biggest impact. Some economists argue that efforts such as the Federal Reserve's aggressive buying of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities, as well as government efforts to shore up banks, are providing a bigger boost than the administration's $787 billion stimulus package.
The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. "There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.
Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.
Economists say the money out the door -- combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon -- is fueling growth above where it would have been without any government action.
Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in the second and third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. The impact in the second quarter, calculated by analyzing how the extra funds flowing into the economy boost consumption, investment and spending, helped slow the rate of decline and will lay the groundwork for positive growth in the third quarter -- something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say the 1% contraction in the second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for the stimulus.
For the third quarter, economists at Goldman Sachs & Co. predict the U.S. economy will grow by 3.3%. "Without that extra stimulus, we would be somewhere around zero," said Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman.
Dave Anderson, chief financial officer of Honeywell International Inc., said the stimulus package actually froze business activity at first as firms tried to figure out how they could benefit from the government spending. The $787 billion package "created actually a slowdown in order activity in terms of the flow that we would normally have anticipated," Mr. Anderson said at a conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley. "We anticipate that that's going to actually pick up in the second half of the year. I think it's not unreasonable to see several hundred million dollars of orders."
Opinion, however, remains split about which program has had the biggest impact. "I don't think the stimulus was necessarily as effective as people claimed it to be or claim it will be," said Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist with Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. He credits the government's "stress tests" of banks, which helped boost confidence on Wall Street and allow banks to raise capital and resume lending.
Economists say other programs are having an impact, including an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home-buyers that has spurred home sales. The cash-for-clunkers program, which provided financial incentives for consumers to trade in older vehicles, did the same for cars.
One big question: Will the boost evaporate once the programs end?
Stuart Hoffman, chief U.S. economist for PNC Financial Services Group, said the stimulus package "caused this bit of a concentrated burst [that] probably will exaggerate the pace of economic growth," since some areas, such as auto sales, could fall back to low levels.
CBO: Three-Quarters Of Stimulus Unspent
First Posted: 11-30-09 09:12 PM | Updated: 12- 1-09 01:06 AM
Ryan Grim (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/ryan-grim) ryan@huffingtonpost.com (mailto:ryan@huffingtonpost.com) | HuffPost Reporting
Only $100 billion of the $787 billion stimulus package passed nine months ago has actually been spent by the federal government so far, with another $90 billion of stimulus coming in the form of tax reductions, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Monday evening (http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10682/11-30-ARRA.pdf). That leaves three quarters of the package -- and its stimulative effects -- yet to come.
Slow as that pace may seem, it's in line with initial CBO estimates.
But much of the spending hasn't had the full impact it could, the report says, because "it appears that stimulus funds substituted for some spending from regular appropriations."
Despite the limitations, the CBO estimates that between 600,000 and 1.6 million people were employed in the third quarter of 2009 who otherwise would not have been. The spending and tax cuts raised the Gross Domestic Product by somewhere between 1.2 and 3.2 percent, it found, and reduced unemployment by 0.3 to 0.9 percent.
In Washington, the stimulus is often discussed as if the entire $787 billion was all spent on the first night -- with some pundits expressing shock and dismay that the economy hasn't already bounced back as a result. That three quarters of the stimulus has yet to be felt undermines their positions.
Shortly after the stimulus was passed, the GOP began declaring it a failure, a conclusion the party has stuck to since - even if some officials take credit for what it's accomplishing (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/30/shuster-stimulus/) when they're back at home.
Democrats in Congress have been stung by the criticism and even while pushing for more stimulus spending have worked hard to avoid calling it a stimulus, dubbing it a "jobs" bill instead.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), told HuffPost Monday night that he's not buying the CBO estimate.
"The White House claimed that if we passed the trillion-dollar 'stimulus' unemployment would stay below 8 percent and jobs would be created 'immediately.' Instead, unemployment is over 10 percent, more than three million more Americans are out of work, and folks are asking 'where are the jobs?'" he wrote in an e-mail.
The White House had been mocked for its flawed reporting of how many jobs the stimulus created - which included jobs in congressional districts that don't actually exist. But the CBO said it used a different model than relying on the word of bureaucrats.
"Estimating the law's overall effects on employment requires a more comprehensive analysis than the recipients' reports provide," the CBO said (http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=433). "Therefore, looking at the actual amounts spent so far (where identifiable) and estimates of the other effects of ARRA on spending and revenues, CBO has estimated the law's impact on employment and economic output using evidence about how previous similar policies have affected the economy and various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy. On that basis, CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States."
That could be a tremendous underestimate, as the CBO's thinking doesn't take into account the possibility that the economy might have fallen off a cliff if the stimulus hadn't been passed, with world markets panicking and employers continuing to eliminate jobs at an eye-popping pace.
Similarly, the reason the CBO failed to predict the rise in unemployment that has taken place since February is that the model it uses doesn't take into account (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/09/is-stimulus-too-small_n_165076.html) the fact that the banking system collapsed.
New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
By Jackie Calmes (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/jackie_calmes/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and Michael Cooper (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/michael_cooper/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 20, 2009
The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/business/economy/21stimulus.html?_r=2&hp)
WASHINGTON — Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.
No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.
These long-running arguments have flared now that the White House and Congressional leaders are talking about a new “jobs bill.” But with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.
The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.
“It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.
Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”
In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do. And it is fortuitous, many say, that the money gets doled out over two years — longer for major construction — considering the probable length of the “jobless recovery” under way as wary employers hold off on new hiring.
But there are criticisms, mainly that the Obama team relied last winter on overly optimistic economic assumptions and oversold the job-creating benefits of the stimulus package.
Optimistic assumptions in turn contributed to producing a package that if anything is too small, analysts say. “The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in retrospect we could have used a little bit more and little bit more front-loaded,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, another financial analysis group, in St. Louis.
While some conservatives remain as skeptical as ever that big increases in government spending give the economy a jolt that is worth the cost, Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist who served in the Reagan administration, said the problem with the package was that some of its tax cuts and spending programs were of a variety that did little to spur the economy.
“There should have been more direct federal spending that would have added to aggregate demand,” he said. “Temporary tax cuts and one-time transfers to seniors were largely saved and didn’t stimulate spending.”
Even the $787 billion price tag overstates the plan’s stimulus value given changes made in Congress, economists say. Nearly a tenth of the package, $70 billion, comes from a provision adjusting the alternative minimum tax so it does not hit middle-income taxpayers this year. That routine fix, which would do nothing to stimulate the economy, was added in part to seek Republican votes. But to keep the package’s overall cost down, provisions that would stimulate the economy — like aid to revenue-starved states and infrastructure projects — got less as a result.
Among Democrats in the White House and Congress, “there was a considerable amount of hand-wringing that it was too small, and I sympathized with that argument,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com and an occasional adviser to lawmakers.
Even so, “the stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do — it is contributing to ending the recession,” he added, citing the economy’s third-quarter expansion by a 3.5 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate. “In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus.”
Politically, however, the president is saddled with his original claim that, with the stimulus, the jobless rate would peak at 8.1 percent — a miscalculation that Republicans constantly recall. While the administration has said its economic assumptions were in line with private forecasts, most of which also underestimated the recession’s punch, it was more optimistic than most.
“That was a mistake,” said Jeffrey A. Frankel, a Harvard University economist and former Clinton administration official who is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research panel that judges when recessions start and end. “I thought so at the time.”
Christina D. Romer, chairwoman of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said attention to that too-rosy projection “prevents people from focusing on the positive impact of the fiscal stimulus. So of course I find that frustrating.”
Much federal infrastructure money has gone not to new job-creating projects but to finance existing plans, which otherwise would be unaffordable to states.
So the stimulus has not “supercharged” transportation construction as was hoped, said Charles Gallagher, an asphalt company owner, speaking for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, but it has nonetheless been “a welcome Band-Aid” to offset state cuts.
“Many contractors across the nation have been able to sustain, if not add to, their work force,” he said.
That sort of impact is what makes federal aid to state governments rank high in economists’ reckoning of the stimulus value of various proposals. Every dollar of additional infrastructure spending means $1.57 in economic activity, according to Moody’s, and general aid to states carries a $1.41 “bang” for each federal buck.
Even more effective are increases for food stamps ($1.74) and unemployment checks ($1.61), because recipients quickly spend their benefits on goods and services.
By contrast, most temporary tax cuts cost more than the stimulus they provide, according to research by Moody’s. That is true of two tax breaks in the stimulus law that Congress, pressed by industry lobbyists, recently extended and sweetened — a tax credit for homebuyers (90 cents of stimulus for each dollar of tax subsidy) and extra deductions for businesses’ net operating losses (21 cents).
Economists said Republicans’ recent proposals to rescind unspent money would be a mistake.
James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Company, said: “If we could be absolutely convinced that the growth we’re getting is for reasons beyond the help the government is giving, then that would make sense. But the fact is we can’t be certain of that.”
valvano
01-13-2010, 10:54 PM
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/04/obama%E2%80%99s-failed-stimulus-in-pictures-jobs-gap-grows-to-76-million/
Obama’s Failed Stimulus in Pictures: Jobs Gap Grows to 7.6 Million
Posted December 4th, 2009 at 12:42pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 23 commentsPrint This Post Print This Post
novjobsdeficit
Another month under President Obama, another 11,000 jobs lost, pushing the total Obama jobs deficit to 7.6 million. One day after the White House jobs summit admitted that the President’s policies — including the massive $787 billion stimulus enacted last spring — are not working to create jobs, the Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report added the exclamation point.
Barack Obama promised that if elected he would create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 through new economic policies, beginning with the enactment of a massive economic stimulus package. So far in his term in office, employment has dropped by about 3.3 million jobs, while the unemployment rate remains at 10 percent. Accompanying his jobs promise, the President also emphasized accountability and measuring his presidency by results. The President’s jobs promise means total employment should be at least 138.6 million by 2010.
Fortunately, the economy’s natural recuperative powers, spurred by powerful, effective intervention from the Federal Reserve, mean that the recession may be ending in the sense that overall output and incomes are stabilizing and sustained growth may resume. Even so, job losses are likely to continue for months, and a very high unemployment rate could persist for years. By his own standard, the Obama jobs deficit attests that his policies have so far failed and show no sign of succeeding. A fundamental course correction is required.
Read J.D.’s full WebMemo, here.
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/12/for-the-first-time-plurality-in-us-now-believe-the-obama-stimulus-bill-hurt-the-economy/
For the First Time– Plurality in US Now Believe the Obama Stimulus Bill Hurt the Economy
Sunday, December 27, 2009, 5:25 PM
Jim Hoft
Obama and Democrats tripled the national deficit in less than one year with their $787 billion failed stimulus.
Obama increased the national debt to $12 Trillion.
And he nearly doubled the unemployment rate from the Bush years since his failed Stimulus Plan was passed.
For the first time a plurality of Americans believe the Pelosi-Obama trillion dollar Stimulus boondoggle hurt the economy rather than helped it.
Rasmussen reported:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.
The number who believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy rose from 28% in September, to 31% in October, and 34% in November before jumping to 38% this month. The week after the president signed the bill, 34% said it would help the economy, while 32% said it would hurt.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18696
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Economic Issues
November 18, 2009
THE FAKE JOBS OF THE FAILED STIMULUS
Forget everything bad you've ever heard about President Barack Obama's $787 economic stimulus, says the Heritage Foundation.
Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website you'll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country:
* In Minnesota's 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds.
* In New Mexico's 22nd Congressional District, 25 jobs have been saved or created using $61,000 in stimulus cash.
* And in Arizona's fighting 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.
The it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-our-tax-dollars-at-stake punch line here is that none of the above Congressional Districts actually exist. Yet those jobs "created or saved" claims still sit on the Obama administration's official "transparency and accountability" website Recovery.gov, says Heritage.
As the Washington Examiner's David Freddoso points out, it would have been nearly costless for the Recovery.gov site designers to limit the input fields so that non-existent Congressional Districts never made it into the public domain, but for whatever reason the Obama administration chose otherwise.
The Washington Examiner has begun tracking stories from established media outlets on bogus job claims made by the Obama administration and they have already identified 75,343 fake jobs out of the 640,000 that the Obama administration claimed. The lesson here is that the American people simply cannot trust any stimulus claims made by the Obama White House. Fortunately we have an objective way to hold Obama accountable, says Heritage:
* The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized employment data since the 1940s.
* When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8 percent and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs.
* The unemployment rate is now 10.2 percent and with only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people.
That makes President Obama's stimulus an objective failure, says Heritage.
Source: Conn Carroll, "The Fake Jobs of Obama's Failed Stimulus," Heritage Foundation, November 17, 2009; Jonathan Karl, "Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist," ABC News, November 16, 2009; and David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway, "75,343 Bogus jobs 'created or saved' by the Stimulus," Washington Examiner, November 12, 2009.
For text:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/17/morning-bell-the-fake-jobs-of-obamas-failed-stimulus/
For ABC text:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-saved-created-congressional-districts-exist/story?id=9097853
For Washington Examiner text:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or-saved-by-the-Stimulus.html
For Recovery.gov Website:
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/04/obama%E2%80%99s-failed-stimulus-in-pictures-jobs-gap-grows-to-76-million/
Obama’s Failed Stimulus in Pictures: Jobs Gap Grows to 7.6 Million
Posted December 4th, 2009 at 12:42pm in Enterprise and Free Markets with 23 commentsPrint This Post Print This Post
novjobsdeficit
Another month under President Obama, another 11,000 jobs lost, pushing the total Obama jobs deficit to 7.6 million. One day after the White House jobs summit admitted that the President’s policies — including the massive $787 billion stimulus enacted last spring — are not working to create jobs, the Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report added the exclamation point.
Barack Obama promised that if elected he would create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 through new economic policies, beginning with the enactment of a massive economic stimulus package. So far in his term in office, employment has dropped by about 3.3 million jobs, while the unemployment rate remains at 10 percent. Accompanying his jobs promise, the President also emphasized accountability and measuring his presidency by results. The President’s jobs promise means total employment should be at least 138.6 million by 2010.
Fortunately, the economy’s natural recuperative powers, spurred by powerful, effective intervention from the Federal Reserve, mean that the recession may be ending in the sense that overall output and incomes are stabilizing and sustained growth may resume. Even so, job losses are likely to continue for months, and a very high unemployment rate could persist for years. By his own standard, the Obama jobs deficit attests that his policies have so far failed and show no sign of succeeding. A fundamental course correction is required.
Read J.D.’s full WebMemo, here.
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/12/for-the-first-time-plurality-in-us-now-believe-the-obama-stimulus-bill-hurt-the-economy/
For the First Time– Plurality in US Now Believe the Obama Stimulus Bill Hurt the Economy
Sunday, December 27, 2009, 5:25 PM
Jim Hoft
Obama and Democrats tripled the national deficit in less than one year with their $787 billion failed stimulus.
Obama increased the national debt to $12 Trillion.
And he nearly doubled the unemployment rate from the Bush years since his failed Stimulus Plan was passed.
For the first time a plurality of Americans believe the Pelosi-Obama trillion dollar Stimulus boondoggle hurt the economy rather than helped it.
Rasmussen reported:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.
The number who believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy rose from 28% in September, to 31% in October, and 34% in November before jumping to 38% this month. The week after the president signed the bill, 34% said it would help the economy, while 32% said it would hurt.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18696
Daily Policy Digest
* Receive the Daily Policy Digest via Email
* Receive the Daily Policy Digest via an RSS Newsfeed
* Receive the Daily Policy Digest via Cell Phone
* Daily Policy Digest Archive
Bookmark and Share
Economic Issues
November 18, 2009
THE FAKE JOBS OF THE FAILED STIMULUS
Forget everything bad you've ever heard about President Barack Obama's $787 economic stimulus, says the Heritage Foundation.
Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website you'll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country:
* In Minnesota's 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds.
* In New Mexico's 22nd Congressional District, 25 jobs have been saved or created using $61,000 in stimulus cash.
* And in Arizona's fighting 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.
The it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren't-our-tax-dollars-at-stake punch line here is that none of the above Congressional Districts actually exist. Yet those jobs "created or saved" claims still sit on the Obama administration's official "transparency and accountability" website Recovery.gov, says Heritage.
As the Washington Examiner's David Freddoso points out, it would have been nearly costless for the Recovery.gov site designers to limit the input fields so that non-existent Congressional Districts never made it into the public domain, but for whatever reason the Obama administration chose otherwise.
The Washington Examiner has begun tracking stories from established media outlets on bogus job claims made by the Obama administration and they have already identified 75,343 fake jobs out of the 640,000 that the Obama administration claimed. The lesson here is that the American people simply cannot trust any stimulus claims made by the Obama White House. Fortunately we have an objective way to hold Obama accountable, says Heritage:
* The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized employment data since the 1940s.
* When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8 percent and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs.
* The unemployment rate is now 10.2 percent and with only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people.
That makes President Obama's stimulus an objective failure, says Heritage.
Source: Conn Carroll, "The Fake Jobs of Obama's Failed Stimulus," Heritage Foundation, November 17, 2009; Jonathan Karl, "Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist," ABC News, November 16, 2009; and David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway, "75,343 Bogus jobs 'created or saved' by the Stimulus," Washington Examiner, November 12, 2009.
For text:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/17/morning-bell-the-fake-jobs-of-obamas-failed-stimulus/
For ABC text:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-saved-created-congressional-districts-exist/story?id=9097853
For Washington Examiner text:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or-saved-by-the-Stimulus.html
For Recovery.gov Website:
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
right-wing blogs, fail
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