Had President Obama not claimed the Democrats’ “stimulus” would keep unemployment at or below 8%, he would not “own” the jobless rate so early in his term. But, now it’s his problem in more ways than one. ABC’s Rick Klein contends: “The administration asked for this — dare we say, literally asked for this — with promises of actual job totals and new accountability and oversight mechanisms, all with Sheriff Joe Biden at the helm.” (H/t to Jennifer Rubin for Klein quote.)
Not only does the president need address the unemployment rate which has increased despite the enactment of his policies, but he must also live up to his promises of accountability and transparency. The government website created to show just where federal “stimulus” money was flowing and how many jobs it had created, showed that money going to Congressional districts which didn’t exist. And exaggerated the number of jobs created.
Even when we eliminate the exaggeration and find out how many jobs were really created (or saved) by the “stimulus,” we need ask what happens when those funds dry up. If we believe the Democrats that we wouldn’t have seen such job creation in the absence of such spending, then unemployment today would be ever higher in its absence. Recall that Lawrence Summers, Director of the President’s National Economic Council, said any fiscal stimulus would be “timely, targeted and temporary“. If it’s temporary, then the funds dry up and there’ll pay no more funds to pay for the jobs (recently saved or created).
No wonder Ed Morrissey claims that all the stimulus did was to kick the can down the road, delaying a real decision on creating permanent jobs:
Most of the jobs in their calculus are bureaucratic jobs at the state level that won’t get funded next year by Washington. States will still have to make tough decisions on employment levels that should have been made decades ago. All Porkulus did was delay that needed decision by throwing money at the states, who used it not to improve efficiency but to paper over budget gaps that will recur next year as well.
With our national debt increased, the problems persist.
And now, the President warns that if we “keep on adding to the debt,” that could lead to a double-dip recession. His very policies will thus make that second recession particularly severe. He has increased the debt to provide funds for only temporary job creation. When those temporary funds run out, unemployment will increase, deepening the downturn.
I like to ask the question from a different angle: If “stimulus” really does “save or create” so many jobs, why aren’t we doing 1000 times as much? Why not send $3 million checks to every American family, and run deficits in the $1 quadrillion range?
“Stimulus” and bailouts do nothing, repeat NOTHING, for the economy except line the pockets of looters, at the expensive of the prudent and the productive. (Looters in and out of government; or in and out of Wall Street.) That’s the whole point. In other eras, it has been called “socialism”.
Why does “stimulus” do nothing? Well, all “stimulus” must be paid for in one of three ways:
1) Government takes money from the People by taxes. Job-destroyer.
2) Government takes money from businesses by competitive borrowing. Job-destroyer.
3) Government takes money’s -value- from the nation’s savers (whether people or businesses), by printing new money from thin air. Job-destroyer.
Obama-Bernanke have mostly been doing (3). The Fed has purchased over $1.5 trillion in bonds since a year ago. ($300B in Treasury bonds and well over $1 trillion in mortgage bonds, which money then flows indirectly into Treasuries from those who benefitted in the bond markets.) Is it a coincidence that $1.5 trillion is just about the amount of Obama’s deficit?
Those giant masses of new money inflate the asset bubbles and commodity bubbles that we’re currently seeing. They inflate the stock market. How well did having a stock market bubble turn out for us, the last 2 times? They inflate the real estate market. How well did the real estate bubble turn out for us, the last time? They inflate commodities. Oil is at $80, gas is at $3.50/gallon, food is creeping up, gold is at $1150. All that is early inflation, folks. How is it helping the economy? How is it *not* lowering people’s living standards and destroying jobs?
To solve unemployment, government must do these things:
1) End all stimulus. Drastically cut spending and deficits.
2) End all bailouts. If (please note *IF*) it’s too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist.
3) Cut corporate taxes across the board. That will help create or save jobs *right now*.
4) Cut regulations, to release the job-creating American entrepreneur from her shackles.
Made a fix. The Chinese are losing patience with us and, under Obama’s policies, if they pull the plug on us, we are hosed.
Exactly! You get it.
I noticed that the Fort Hood speech bump has all but disappeared today. Imagine that.
P.S. Going back to my question:
No leftie ever has a good answer.
A nation cannot restore its fortunes, much less get rich, by printing money. Or by running deficits at 9% of its GDP. That is the path to becoming a Third World country. And it is the path Obama has us on.
Leftie Senator Dick Durbin yesterday was extolling the virtues of bringing a 100 terrorists to Illinois because……
it would create 2000 jobs and then the requisite “schools, hospitals and infastructure. ” How clueless. So it takes a year to try those 100 terrorists, what happens to the 2000 guards, schools and hospitals then?The stupidity of liberals is unbounded.
Gregory of Yardale, one of my favorite bloggers (or is he a douche? 😉 ), has this to say of the Dear Teleprompter’s stern warning against deficits:
Heh.
wow, you clearly have no grasp on economics.
so, if I have no grasp on economics, bob, it should be easy for you to demolish my arguments and I invite you to do so.
ROFL 🙂
The point of the stimulus was to spur the recovery, and also to provide jobs until the recovery kicks in. It is based on the obvious point that almost all the jobs that eventually are formed will be formed by the economy in recovery. The stimulus is a bridge to that recovery. Assuming that unemployment will increase when the stimulus is over is to assume that there will be no recovery.
I dont see the sense of this argument.
NONE of which is happening. Which is why the congress critters are running around how to come up with a Porkulus II and Chairman Maobama has to hold a jobs “summit”, after almost a year, to figure out how to get businesses to create jobs. However, we all know damn well that he won’t do what it takes to get there.
Natch. You have your job, so why the f*ck should you care?
…by doing MORE of the things that created the recession in the first place, but also conveniently rewarding the world’s looters. And Tano is thrilled with it. Natch.
Indeed there won’t be. Your Lord and Savior, Tano, today Himself predicted a “double-dip” recession if we don’t reduce our government deficits and spending. And who has been doing that spending? Who has every intention of increasing it, at every point? The same dude. Please see #5.
Because *who* will produce the recovery? What are you counting on to produce it, Tano? What people? (Hint: You’re counting on the prudent and the productive… the people that your Lord and Savior’s policies are out to exploit, i.e., to punish.)
There is no metric to count jobs “saved’. It is a fairy tale number.
I think Mr. Obama’s reluctance to “own” the true unemployment figures is not sitting well with middle America. Only lefty-lefties wallow in the “victim” puddle.
Now that the “historic” election is over, the zealots will not vote again.
ILC, yup when all the easy money runs out; whatever shall they do?