On the eve of the long holiday weekend, the Obama administration released their typical “the-press-will-ignore-these-Friday-numbers” information dump. If you look at what these stats bring to light it’s really no surprise.
The “numbers” in question are in regards to the $666 billion Obama stimulus package, enthusiastically supported by Claire McCaskill, which now verify what Conservatives have been arguing for years: that the stimulus package was a colossal failure, so much so that it is literally doing more harm than good to the economy.
Crunching the numbers, the Weekly Standard points out some shocking statistics:
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles [that] the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
And it gets worse:
…the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead… over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it… the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.
Claire McCaskill not only was a staunch advocate of the stimulus, but she has recently touted its supposed achievements, which she called “wildly successful.” The definition of “wild success” must be wildly different in Liberal dictionaries than everyone else’s.
Lloyd Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party, went on the offensive:
By all accounts, the McCaskill-backed stimulus has failed. It failed to keep the unemployment rate below 8% as promised, it failed to create ‘shovel-ready’ jobs as promised, and too many Americans still cannot find work… Still, Claire McCaskill and the Democrats are living in denial. Only a Democrat like Claire McCaskill could believe that borrowing and spending more than a quarter of a million dollars to create a single job could make a government program ‘wildly successful.’
Unemployment was at 7.3% when this debate was underway. It is now 9.1%, and the national debt has increased from $10 trillion to $15 trillion in the same period of time.
Not surprisingly, the Weekly Standard sums things up best:
All sides agree on these incriminating numbers — and now they also appear to agree on this important point: The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus."
Apparently, these days, vindication comes at a cost of half a trillion bucks. Here’s hoping it’s a little cheaper next time.
- B.H.
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