Wasn’t The Stimulus Supposed To Create Jobs?

The nearly 1 trillion dollar stimulus package that had to be passed immediately back when Obama took office was supposed to fix the economy and create jobs. Obama told us that unemployment would go way up without the stimulus but would top out at under 9% with it. We have an unemployment rate of 10% and this is an indication that either the stimulus did not work, they lied to us, or they did not know what they were talking about. I think it is a little of each.

Only about 20% of the stimulus money has been spent. It was supposed to be spent on “shovel ready” projects that would create jobs but no jobs are being created and it is obvious that the stimulus did not work. So what do you think Democrats do when their massive spending does not work? Why, they spend more. The Democrats in the House passed a 155 billion dollar jobs bill designed to go toward “shovel ready” projects and create jobs.

Forgive me, but wasn’t the first stimulus supposed to create jobs and be for “shovel ready” projects? If it did not work, why spend more money for the same thing? Since only 20% of the original stimulus has been spent, why commit more money? Shouldn’t they spend all the original stimulus before committing more money?

This is a sign that the first stimulus was a failure. It is an admission from Democrats that the massive spending did not help. Instead of being smart and realizing that more of the same was bad, they spent anyway.

The bill was touted as a job creator but it is political ploy. The Democrats are trying to show that they are on top of things by throwing more money at the problem. They are foolishly demonstrating that they have no concept of fiscal responsibility (which is their pattern) and they are doing so at their own peril.

Do they actually think Americans are so stupid we will not be able to see they are throwing good money after bad and that they are doing more of what has proven to be ineffective? Can’t they see the stupidity of committing more money to this when 80% of the original money has NOT been spent?

This is absolute stupidity and will end up costing them in the long run.

It will end up costing all of us in the long run…

Source:
al-Reuters

Big Dog

Gunline

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12 Responses to “Wasn’t The Stimulus Supposed To Create Jobs?”

  1. Adam says:

    “Obama told us that unemployment would go way up without the stimulus but would top out at under 9% with it.”

    The development and bill creation process for the stimulus took so long that by the time it was passing some people like Paul Krugman were already saying they didn’t think it would be enough because the economy was worse than expected and because it included more tax cuts than were needed. This was not a lie or a failure of the stimulus but just due to the inability to accurately predict the nature of one of the biggest (if not the biggest) recessions since the Great Depression.

    “It was supposed to be spent on ‘shovel ready’ projects that would create jobs but no jobs are being created and it is obvious that the stimulus did not work.”

    We’ve heard plenty about failure from politicians and bloggers but here is what the CBO says about the success of the stimulus:

    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, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher, than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA.

    “Do they actually think Americans are so stupid we will not be able to see they are throwing good money after bad and that they are doing more of what has proven to be ineffective?”

    A recent Bloomberg poll shows things that might concern both sides of the isle. In this instance it shows a 60%+ majority of Americans supporting additional spending for jobs and support for making the rich pay for it.

    I guess that means you think Americans are stupid.

  2. Big Dog says:

    Of course the people want the rich to pay for it. They have been conditioned by liberals to believe that the rich are so loaded they can afford anything. This is what happens when people don’t have skin in the game. They vote or poll to have someone else pay for it because they are not paying.

    Cut the Capital Gains tax to zero for a year and the Corporate tax in half for a year and you will see job growth and since the wealthy are the ones who create jobs then they technically would do what the poll suggests.

    The CBO can only ESTIMATE based upon information it is given. That is why it can say the health reform is under the number Obama wants, because it has only been given a little information. If the CBO were given the entire bill to grade and not a paper of assumptions then the cost of the health care bill would defeat it immediately.

    The CBO bases its estimates on numbers government gives it so I doubt its estimates are correct. The stimulus was completed within a month of Obama taking office and pushed through so fast no one read it. It was not the slowness of the process that led to more problems.

    And tell me, why are the small so called tax cuts to blame but the huge spending not? And if only 20% has been spent of Stim I why have Stim II?

    And Krugman does not know what he is talking about, never did. And don’t tell me he won an award or some crap, Obama got a Nobel and did nothing to earn it.

    • Adam says:

      “…wealthy are the ones who create jobs.”

      You’ve cited this many times before but you still can’t account for that. Consider the following facts:

      * Small businesses create 65 percent of all new jobs in America.
      * There are roughly 25 million small businesses in America
      * Fewer than 700,000 are estimated to fall into the top two income brackets.

      So how is it that the wealthy create jobs?

      • Blake says:

        By providing the money for economic growth- I guess simplicity is beyond you- Illegal immigrants are not creating jobs, nor are the homeless or jobless.
        Who does that leave? People with money, Duh!

  3. Big Dog says:

    Poor people do not create jobs.

    Most small businesses make >250k, the limit that Obama set for taxes on the “rich”

    You can take 100% of all the money the top two income brackets make and it will not pay for much of anything.

    You can’t keep taxing the rich for everything, they don’t have enough to pay for it all.

    Those who pay no taxes are always willing to go after those who do. It is always easier to decide how to spend someone else’s money.

  4. Adam says:

    “Most small businesses make >250k”

    Fewer than 700,000 small business owners, those that file as individuals, make over 250k.

  5. Adam says:

    You always try to discredit the CBO by pretending the CBO doesn’t have all the information or that they are somehow told just enough to get the CBO to release a favorable report. This completely untrue of course, specially in the example we’re discussing. From the document I linked to:

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) based its estimates of the economic effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) on information from a variety of sources: macroeconometric forecasting models, general-equilibrium models, and direct extrapolations of past data. Macroeconometric forecasting models incorporate relationships between aggregate economic variables that are based largely on historical evidence. General-equilibrium models, by contrast, are built on explicit assumptions about the decisionmaking of individuals and businesses. Another source of information on the economic effects of fiscal stimulus is research that makes projections for the future by directly examining the correlations between economic variables in the past or by evaluating the effects of specific types of policy events in the past.

    • Big Dog says:

      Forgive me, the former guy in charge of the CBO was on a local radio station and said the opposite. I guess he does not know what he is talking about.

      • Adam says:

        We can take it on a case by case basis. In this case you have said the CBO report on the stimulus is flawed because they only get what the government tells them. The CBO lists their sources in that document and they exceed your assumptions.

  6. Adam says:

    The VAST majority of small business owners are middle class. The middle class creates the jobs, not rich.

  7. Big Dog says:

    Are you talking about personal income of the small business owner or the business income of the business.

    • Adam says:

      I’m talking about the small business owners that file their taxes as individuals and make over $250,000. There are fewer than 700,000 of these out of about 25 million small businesses.