Tag Archives: Economy

President Food Stamp: growth in food stamp rolls is 75 times number of jobs created

The Weekly Standard explains.

Excerpt:

With the latest jobs report, it is now the case that “Under Obama, Food Stamp Growth [Is] 75 Times Greater Than Job Creation,” according to statistics compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. “For Every Person Added to Jobs Rolls Since January 2009, 75 People Added To Food Stamp Rolls.”

Since January 2009, as the chart shows, a net of 194,000 new jobs have been created. During that same time, 14.7 million have been added to the food stamp rolls.

“Simply put, the President’s policies have not produced jobs. During his time in office, 14.7 million people were added to the food stamp rolls. Over that same time, only 194,000 jobs were created—thus 76 people went on food stamps for every one that found a job,” says Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. “This is a product of low growth. Post-recession economic growth in 2010 was 2.4%, and dropped in 2011 to 1.8%. This year it has dropped again to 1.77%. Few, if any, net jobs will be created with growth of less than 2%.”

This is unacceptable, and we need a change.

New e-mails reveal that White House pressured Department of Energy to make loans

From the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Previously undisclosed emails made public today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee describe multiple instances of White House pressure on career Department of Energy officials to speed up approval of government loans to clean energy firms like Solyndra and Abound Solar.

President Obama is described in one of the emails as having personally approved “moving it ahead,” thus reversing a prior decision by DOE career officials not to extend $2 billion in tax-funded help to AREVA, a French nuclear power company, on an Idaho project.

Vice-President Joe Biden is described in other emails as exerting heavy pressure to gain approval of a $1.3 billion wind farm project at Shepherd’s Flat, Oregon.

The new emails contradict claims by Obama and others in his administration that all decisions on the $20 billion DOE clean energy loans were made by career executives in the department.

[…][A]n Oct. 30, 2010, email from Jim McCrea, a credit advisor to the energy loan program, to Jonathan Silver, the program’s executive director, described his worries about pressure from the White House to use a “fast-track process” to approve loans.

“I am growing increasingly worried about a fast track process imposed on us at the POTUS [President of the United States] level based on this chaotic process that we are undergoing … by designing the fast track process and having it approved at the POTUS level (which is an absolute waste of his time!) it legitimizes every element and it becomes embedded like the 55% recovery rate which also was imposed by POTUS,” McCrea said.

In another email made public today by the House panel, Silver instructed McCrea to tell a Treasury Department official of White House support for DOE help to Abound Solar.

“You better let him know that WH wants to move Abound forward. Policy will have to wait unless they have a specific policy problem with abound,” Silver said in the June 25, 2010, email.

Abound Solar is a Colorado-based solar panel manufacturer that had used $68 million of a $400 million DOE loan guarantee before filing for bankruptcy earlier this year.

You can a list of most of the green energy failures and the details of their Department of Energy loans here from Heritage Action.

Here’s a snip:

Thanks to analysts at The Heritage Foundation, a list has been compiled of 12 “green” energy companies which received Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees but are now bankrupt:

  1. “Abound Solar (Loveland, Colorado), manufacturer of thin film photovoltaic modules.
  2. Beacon Power (Tyngsborough, Massachusetts), designed and developed advanced products and services to support stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation.
  3. Ener1 (Indianapolis, Indiana), built compact lithium-ion-powered battery solutions for hybrid and electric cars.
  4. Energy Conversion Devices (Rochester Hills, Michigan/Auburn Hills, Michigan), manufacturer of flexible thin film photovoltaic (PV) technology and a producer of batteries and other renewable energy-related products.
  5. Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Marlborough, Massachusetts), manufactured and installed solar panels.
  6. Mountain Plaza, Inc. (Dandridge, Tennessee), designed and implemented “truck-stop electrification” technology.
  7. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsens Mills Acquisition Co. (Berlin, Wisconsin), a private company producing ethanol.
  8. Range Fuels (Soperton, Georgia), tried to develop a technology that converted biomass into ethanol without the use of enzymes.
  9. Raser Technologies (Provo, Utah), geothermal power plants and technology licensing.
  10. Solyndra (Fremont, California), manufacturer of cylindrical panels of thin-film solar cells.
  11. Spectrawatt (Hopewell, New York), solar cell manufacturer.
  12. Thompson River Power LLC (Wayzata, Minnesota), designed and developed advanced products and services to support stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation.”

This is what the Obama adminstration means by “stimulus” and “shovel-ready” projects. This was their strategy to create jobs by spending taxpayer money and borrowing money from your children.

Is Obama telling the truth about creating 5.2 million new jobs?

From Yahoo News, of all places.

Excerpt:

In a new TV ad, President Obama makes an inflated claim to have added 5.2 million new jobs. The total added during his time in office is actually about 325,000.

In the ad, the president says “over 5 million new jobs” while the figure “5.2 million” appears on screen. But that’s a doubly misleading figure.

  • Viewers would need to pay close attention to the on-screen graphic to know that the ad refers only to employment gains starting in March 2010, omitting the 4.3 million jobs that were lost in the first year of Obama’s term.
  • And there’s no way a viewer would know that the total counts only private-sector jobs, omitting continuing losses in government employment.

According to the most recent employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy has eked out a net gain of 325,000 jobs since January 2009, when Obama took office. And that’s giving credit for roughly 386,000 jobs that the BLS has announced, on a preliminary basis, that it will be adding to this year’s employment totals next year, as a result of its routine annual “benchmarking” analysis.

Looking only at private-sector jobs, it’s true that the total has risen just under 5.2 million since February 2010 — provided that credit is given for roughly 453,000 private-sector jobs to be added next year through the BLS benchmarking process. But over Obama’s entire term, those private-sector jobs have gone up only 967,000, even counting benchmarking additions.

The Heritage Foundation puts the number even lower, at 316,000 jobs created in the last 30 months.