Tag Archives: Stimulus

News

Obama wants at least 50 billion more for another bailout

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Great article by Hans Bader in the Examiner.

Excerpt:

President Obama now wants Congress to spend $50 billion to keep state governments from laying off their employees.  In essence, this is a bailout for the state-government-employee unions that bankroll liberal politicians.  Earlier, Obama’s allies in Congress proposed spending billions to bail out mismanaged and underfunded union pension funds.

The state governments will never have to pay back any of this bailout money, which rewards them for irresponsibly increasing their employees’ pay much faster than inflation, to levels much higher than in the private sector.

By contrast, the private banks that were bailed out have repaid most of the money they received, while their shareholders lost most of their money–92.6 percent at Citibank.

While millions of private sector employees have been laid off in the current recession, few government employees have been.

[…]Obama has not hidden his bias towards these powerful unions.  As he noted in a 2006 book, “I owe those unions. . .When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away.  I don’t mind feeling obligated.”

How wisely is government money spent, anyway?

$700,000 for research on jokes. (H/T The Blog Prof)

It reminds me of this Monty Python sketch:

This is why the unemployment rate has gone UP with all of this stimulus spending. Government isn’t as efficient at creating jobs as private businesses… government wastes money because it’s not their money. They have nothing to gain by being efficient,  but private businesses have to be efficient.

Bader’s article is worth reading in full because it explains in detail how the Democrats caused the mortgage crisis.

News

Unemployment up to 9.6%, 283K jobs lost during recovery summer

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Detroit Job Fair
Detroit Job Fair (AP Photo)

This is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Excerpt:

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unemployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000).

Household Survey Data

The number of unemployed persons (14.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.6 percent) were little changed in August. From May through August, the jobless rate remained in the range of 9.5 to 9.7 percent. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (9.8 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (26.3 percent), whites (8.7 percent), blacks (16.3 percent), and Hispanics (12.0 percent) showed little change in August. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The total number of jobs lost during the Democrats’ “recovery summer” is now at 283,000.  283,000 jobs lost during the “summer of recovery”. No amount of good intentions and fine speeches is going to change the laws of economics – if you take money from the private sector and spend it on government programs and you will lose jobs.

I notice that the mainstream media and the White House are spinning the job numbers by talking about the jobs gained number instead of the net jobs lost, or the rising unemployment rate, so I had to set things straight.

And keep in mind that the Democrats intend to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, which really means implementing the largest tax hike in history. It will totally destroy the economy.

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unem-
ployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary
workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector
payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000).

Household Survey Data

The number of unemployed persons (14.9 million) and the unemployment rate
(9.6 percent) were little changed in August. From May through August, the
jobless rate remained in the range of 9.5 to 9.7 percent. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (9.8 per-
cent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (26.3 percent), whites (8.7 per-
cent), blacks (16.3 percent), and Hispanics (12.0 percent) showed little
change in August. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.2 percent, not season-
ally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
News

A closer look at Obama’s 1-billion dollar “stimulus” earmark

3 Comments

From the Heritage Foundation. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) likes to say that Congressional earmarking has become the gateway drug to federal overspending.  Is there any better evidence of this theory then President Barack Obama’s $1 billion earmark for a special project in Illinois that was slipped into his failed $862 billion stimulus?  According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the Obama Administration awarded $1 billion on August 5th for a Carbon Capture and Storage Network in Illinois:

Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing greenhouse gas pollution.  This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy

This project was an earmark in the stimulus according to a Washington Post story dated March 6, 2009:

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington. The funding, for “fossil energy research and development,” is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama.

Stimulus seems to be a way of rewarding the people who voted for you with money from the people who didn’t vote for you. At least, that’s the way it is for Obama, apparently.