I had to laugh (to keep from crying) when I saw the title of this ABC News
article: "Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts that Don't Exist." Everyone knows that the administration is falling all over itself trying to further the facade that the "stimulus" package has created or saved tens of thousands of jobs, a position that becomes harder to defend now that the unemployment rate has surpassed 10% and continues to climb. Unsurprisingly, it is
well-documented that the numbers on recovery.org for jobs "created or saved" have been wildly inflated and over-exaggerated. But the government has one-upped itself, citing these 'created or saved' stats (borderline fantasy in their own right) in fantasy congressional districts to drum up support for the failed spendulus package on recovery.org.
This has rubbed powerful democrats on the Hill the wrong way. Rep. David Obey, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had this to say: "The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
You want to know the saddest part of this whole story? A taxpayer-funded grant of $18 million was given to fund recovery.org. I'm thrilled to know taxpayer dollars are being spent to perpetuate "waste, fraud, and abuse." And we want these guys to run our health care system?
This has rubbed powerful democrats on the Hill the wrong way. Rep. David Obey, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had this to say: "The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
4 comments:
I laughed too when I read this. It's like they're not even trying to hide that they're lying to us anymore.
I think the stimulus has done some good. It helped a lot of universities get through the downturn without having to fire or lay off a bunch of their staff, it's extended the first time buyers tax credits for homes, I think most economists have said that's helped the housing market. However, figuring that we will have to pay that back plus interest someday, I don't think it was worth it. I think sone of it was good, but way to large. Is anyone really surprised the government is exaggerating the stats? Not me.
What is silly is that anyone took seriously the "jobs saved" part of the equation. Unemployment was not supposed to top 8%. If the stimulus package had not "saved jobs" under the govt. theory, would unemployment now be 12%?
And if these numbers, supposed to measure what happened in the past are inflated, what can we imagine about the estimates of the future costs of proposed programs? Perhaps a little understated?
Regardless of the numbers I've always felt like it's just too easy for Obama too say "it WOULD have been worse" without the stimulus. Statistically speaking that's literally an IMPOSSIBLE claim to make, unless you're God and can run a controlled experiment without the stimulus then turn back time and compare the difference.
As such it's an impossible claim to dispute because if you want to disagree with his claim (that X amount of jobs were "saved") you'd have to run the exact same impossible experiment.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying the stimulus had ABSOLUTELY no effect, what I'm saying is that the effect was designed to be minimal enough to keep the economy in the gutter but have enough plausible deniability for Obama to claim he saved us from complete disaster. On those terms, it seems to be exactly what was accomplished. If they REALLY wanted it to fix the economy, they would have spent it all (or as much as they could) at the start and in a much more efficient way.
I've always felt Rush Limbaugh's analogy to a fire-starter hits the nail on the head: some guy secretly sets your house on fire, putting him in the perfect position to "save" your house by calling the fire department. To me the stimulus was specifically designed NOT to fix the economy but to destroy it so the democrats would be "needed" to "fix" it.
One example of this is health care: it seemed to conveniently become urgently right AFTER the stimulus passed, but why not before? How hard would it have been to set aside $1 Trillion of the stimulus bill for funding the health-care overhaul? I'll tell you why: because it would have actually DONE something to actually fix the economy, and that's not a good thing for a democrat who wants to stay in power because a fixed economy creates an independent electorate.
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