From Fox News.

Excerpt:

A federal stimulus grant of nearly $500,000 to grow trees and stimulate the economy in Nevada yielded a whopping 1.72 jobs, according to government statistics.

In 2009, the U.S. Forest Service awarded $490,000 of stimulus money to Nevada’s Clark County Urban Forestry Revitalization Project, aimed at revitalizing urban neighborhoods in the county with trees, plants, and green-industry training.

According to Recovery.gov, the U.S. government’s official website related to Recovery Act spending, the project created 1.72 permanent jobs.  In addition, the Nevada state Division of Forestry reported the federal grant generated one full-time temporary job and 11 short-term project-oriented jobs.

[…]Repeated calls by FoxNews.com to the U.S. Forest Service were not returned.

[…]”Looking at the failure of the stimulus to live up to its promises, not just in Nevada, but throughout America, I think the question becomes ‘is there any good use of stimulus money?'” said Douglas Kellogg, communications manager for National Taxpayers Union, in an email to FoxNews.com.

[…]”The president may well propose new stimulus efforts when Congress returns from recess,” said Kellogg, “and those who learn from past stimulus debacles will not be fooled again.”

The Heritage Foundation explains how government spending has never worked to create jobs. Not even when Republicans do it.

Excerpt:

Indeed, President Obama’s stimulus bill failed by its own standards. In a January 2009 report, White House economists predicted that the stimulus bill would create (not merely save) 3.3 million net jobs by 2010. Since then, 3.5 million more net jobs have been lost, pushing the unemployment rate above 10 percent.[1] The fact that government failed to spend its way to prosperity is not an isolated incident:

• During the 1930s, New Deal lawmakers doubled federal spending–yet unemployment remained above 20 percent until World War II.
• Japan responded to a 1990 recession by passing 10 stimulus spending bills over 8 years (building the largest national debt in the industrialized world)–yet its economy remained stagnant.
• In 2001, President Bush responded to a recession by “injecting” tax rebates into the economy. The economy did not respond until two years later, when tax rate reductions were implemented.
• In 2008, President Bush tried to head off the current recession with another round of tax rebates. The recession continued to worsen.
• Now, the most recent $787 billion stimulus bill was intended to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. In November, it topped 10 percent.[2]

Why is this? It’s because the government never spends money as efficiently as the private sector. Private sector firms have to stay lean and mean in order to stay afloat – because they have competitors who are always trying to sell better goods and services for less money. In a capitalist economy, the consumer is king – all the businesses fight to earn the customers’ money. But the government has no competitors, and so they neither care about efficiency, nor pleasing their customers.

CBS News reports:

ABC News reports:

And this one features a real economist:

We shouldn’t let the government take money out of the private sector and let the public sector spend it on “stimulus”. Stimulus means taking money away from your boss, or your possible bosses, and spending it on trees. It’s how you lose jobs – and that’s what we have today.

Related posts

• Solar power firm goes bankrupt after receiving millions of taxpayer dollars
• Public schools spend $130,000 of stimulus money on diversity training books
• Democrat economists: “stimulus” cost $278,000 per job
• Obama blasts private jet tax breaks created by his own stimulus
• Green energy firm run by Obama fundraiser gets $535M loan guarantee
• Obama spent $80 billion dollars on green jobs so where are the jobs?

From the Weekly Standard.

Excerpt:

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

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 the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), 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.

In other words, 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.

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now.  In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

Again, this is the verdict of Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors, which is about as much of a home-field ruling as anyone could ever ask for. In truth, it’s quite possible that by borrowing an amount greater than the regular defense budget or the annual cost of Medicare, and then spending it mostly on Democratic constituencies rather than in a manner genuinely designed to stimulate the economy, Obama’s “stimulus” has actually undermined the economy’s recovery — while leaving us (thus far) $666 billion deeper in debt.

Imagine what a report would say that wasn’t written by Obama’s own economists.