The Stimulus Is A Failure

[chequita guevara]

DOn't just extend unemployment, increase it. $1100 a month is not enough.

[DinoDoc]

You could get a job, che. Obama is making a summer job program for people like you.

[Drake Tungsten]

I could survive on $1100 a month just fine in Harlem. I doubt your housing is any more expensive...

[Wezil]

I know people that would choose not to work for $1100 a month.

[rah]

Hmmm i though it was 1600 in Illinois if you were at the max.

[Ben Kenobi]

You get 1100 a month and it's not enough? Wow.

[Japher]

How long has Che been out of work now. Seems like forever.

[Jon Miller]

It will be a success as far as the sciences are concerned. I think...

JM

[Drake Tungsten]

The media is finally catching up with me.

Obama repackages stimulus plans with old promises

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama assured the nation his recovery plan was on track Monday, scrambling to calm Americans unnerved by unemployment rates still persistently rising nearly four months after he signed the biggest economic stimulus in history.

Obama admitted his own dissatisfaction with the progress but said his administration would ramp up stimulus spending in the coming months. The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent, of the $787 billion stimulus, but that total has always been expected to rise sharply this summer.

"Now we're in a position to really accelerate," Obama said.

He also repeated an earlier promise to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.

Neither the acceleration nor the jobs goal are new. Both represent a White House repackaging of promises and projects to blunt criticism that the effects haven't been worth the historic price tag. And the job estimate is so murky, it can never be verified.

The economy has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus measure was signed in February, far overshadowing White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs. Public opinion of Obama's handling of the economy has declined along with the jobs data.

For the first time, the administration admitted the economic forecasts it used to sell the stimulus were overly optimistic.

"At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable," Vice President Joe Biden's top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said Monday, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. "Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic."

By now, according to earlier White House economic models, the nation's unemployment rate should be on the decline. The forecasts used to drum up support for the plan projected today's unemployment would be about 8 percent. Instead, it sits at 9.4 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.

Some analysts believe the White House is still not being realistic, that Obama will be lucky if any real job creation from his recovery effort is seen by the end of the year, let alone the employment explosion he predicts.

"I think these estimates are overly optimistic," said Arpitha Bykere, a senior analyst with RGE Monitor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_stimulus

I wish the media would start questioning Obama's retarded "jobs created or saved" metric, but you can't expect too much too fast. I'll take this baby step.

[Drake Tungsten]

Leave it to Jake Tapper to give me the responsible journalism I so desperately crave.

Amidst Questions About Their Numbers, White House Says Stimulus Will Save or Create 600,000 Jobs in the Next 100 Days

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report:

After much criticism that the $787 stimulus bill hasn’t created enough jobs and isn’t being distributed quickly enough with more than $700 billion of it unspent, President Obama and Vice President Biden debuted their new summer mantra: they will, they said, create or save 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days.

But their 600,000 figure comes at a time when other numerical projections and claims have been questioned.

In a meeting in the State Dining Room, the president and his No. 2 told the Cabinet that they need to identify new projects that are certain to be up and running in the second hundreds days of the administration.

“It's about pace on the ball,” Vice President Biden said. “Every hundred days, if we're doing this right, Mr. President, should produce more than the last hundred days. So Mr. President, by the fall I think we're going to be much further down the road to recovery.”

The President referenced Friday’s jobless numbers – the nation lost an additional 345,00 jobs in the month of May -- to frame the desperate situation at hand, but one that is showing, in their eyes, signs of modest improvement.

The jobless number of 345,000 “was far less than was expected, but it's still too many,” President Obama said.

“Having said that, this was the fewest number of jobs that we have lost in about eight months,” he president said, “so it was about half the number lost of just a few months ago. And it's a sign that we're moving in the right direction. The key is for us to build on the modest progress that has been made in the months to come.”

The administration last month claimed that 150,000 jobs had already been saved or created due to the stimulus bill, though that number is based on a theoretical projection and not an actual count.

As ABC News’ David Kerley points out, last week Keith Hall, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, told a House subcommittee that he could not substantiate the claim.

“No,” Hall said. “That would be a very difficult thing for anybody to substantiate…We're busy just counting jobs.”

In January, when the Obama team began presenting their pitch for the stimulus plan, they denied an overly rosy scenario. But the chart then-President-elect Obama’s economic team provided to the public indicates that the unemployment rate, which is currently 9.4%, is higher than the Obama team forecast it would be even if the stimulus plan had not become law.

Back then Council of Economic Advisers chair Christine Romer predicted that with the stimulus bill, the unemployment rate right now would be under 8%. Without the $787 billion stimulus package, Romer predicted an unemployment rate of just over 8%.

Today the president expressed pride in the transparent fashion that the implementation of the first round of stimulus money, and proudly noted that there has not been a rash of scandals involving the misuse of stimulus funds.

“We're going to do it continuing to operate in a transparent fashion so that taxpayers know this money is not being wasted on a bunch of boondoggles,” said Mr. Obama. “And I think that sometimes good news comes in what you don't hear about, and you haven't heard a bunch of scandals -- knock on wood -- so far. That doesn't mean that this thing is going to be flawless, but I think it is fair to say that given the speed with which we've acted, all of you can be proud that many of the safeguards and transparency measures that have taken place so far seem to have worked.”

Just last week at a small business roundtable at Pace University, “Sheriff Joe” Biden cited scandals as a reason the spending wasn’t happening as quickly as some would like. “Some people are being scammed already,” Biden said, adding that “there are going to be mistakes made” with stimulus money. “There's been some criticism that we've not gotten enough money out so far," Biden said. "Well look, since I'm the guy who was put in charge of it, I want to make sure in the first 100 days we do it right."

If there were unreasonable expectations for how quickly the stimulus bill would create jobs, the White House is not immune from blame. Though various officials often said the bill would take time to work, that was not always the consistent message, especially in February when the White House was lobbying Congress to pass the bill. Larry Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, told CNN on February 9, 2009, “you'll see the effects begin almost immediately.”

And during a visit to the Caterpillar Plant in East Peoria, Ill., President Obama suggested that “if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off." But CEO Jim Owens, asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop 22,000 announced layoffs, said, "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/amidst-questions-about-their-numbers-white-house-says-stimulus-will-save-or-create-600000-jobs-in-the-next-100-days.html

[SlowwHand]

We're so screwed.

[Drake Tungsten]

A plurality of Americans think the stimulus is a failure...

Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans say the rest of the new government spending authorized in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan should now be canceled. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 36% disagree and 20% are not sure.

According to news reports, only $36 billion of the stimulus plan had been spent as of late May.

Just 20% of adults say the tax cuts included in the stimulus plan should be canceled while 55% disagree. The stimulus plan includes $288 billion in tax cuts.

While there is a wide partisan gap on the question of stimulus spending, there is little partisan disagreement on maintaining the tax cuts.

President Obama on Monday vowed to speed up the pace of stimulus spending and said the money will help “create or save” 600,000 more jobs this summer.

However, only 31% of Americans believe the new government spending in the stimulus package creates new jobs. Forty-eight percent (48%) say the stimulus spending does not create jobs, and 21% are not sure.

Americans have mixed feelings about whether speeding up the new government spending in the stimulus package will help the economy. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the increased spending will be good for the economy, but 44% say it will be bad. Eight percent (8%) think it will have no impact.

A plurality of government employees believe speeding up the stimulus will be good for the economy. However, those who work in the private sector strongly disagree.

Only 31% of U.S. voters believe the economic stimulus package has helped the economy. That's down from 38% when it first passed in February.
For the first time in years, voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on the handling of the economy.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Americans believe that increases in government spending are generally bad for the economy. For nearly four-out-of-five U.S. voters, the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending is a bigger problem than the public’s resistance to more taxes.

Most voters continue to worry that the federal government will do too much in reacting to the country’s current economic problems.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/economic_stimulus_package/45_say_cancel_rest_of_stimulus_spending

[DaShi]

Most voters are idiots.

[Drake Tungsten]

That does explain how Bush and Obama got elected.

[DaShi]

Look, we got our symbol and dodged the bullet that was McCain. Now people want the economy fixed too? That's asking too much of one man.