This article from the National Review is awesome. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The odds that the stimulus package would “create or save” millions of jobs, per the administration’s promises, were never good. The government is borrowing enormous amounts of money to pay for the stimulus. That money should be funding job creation in the private sector. Instead, it is going to shore up insolvent spendthrift state governments, to expand Medicaid and unemployment benefits, and to lay the groundwork for an aid-dependent green-energy sector that is going to drain the nation’s resources for years to come.

[…]If we divide the number of dollars spent by the number of jobs the White House claims were saved or created, the result is a cost of $160,000 per job.

[…]America’s private sector is resilient, and it will bounce back. Laying too much of the blame at Obama’s feet risks setting him up to take the credit for the comeback when things inevitably improve. Republicans’ arguments should focus on the long term. Obama’s decision to double-down on the nation’s bad housing bet risks reinflating the real-estate bubble. The new taxes associated with his health-care and energy bills will dampen growth and weaken the recovery. The debt he is piling up has unnerved our creditors, and his spending sprees are distorting the allocation of resources in our economy.

[…]The president just signed yet another extension of unemployment benefits, stretching the eligibility period to nearly two years in some states. The bill funds the additional benefits by extending a payroll tax on employers that was scheduled to expire at the end of the year. In other words, the administration is simultaneously providing incentives for workers not to work and for employers not to hire them.

I wrote before about how government spending cannot create jobs.