Obama’s Mission Accomplished Moment
"Now every economist who has looked at it has said that the American Recovery Act [stimulus bill] did its job." Obama, June 30th, 2010 Racine, Wisconsin. What exactly was it supposed to do? We all remember in early January 2009 when President-elect Barack Obama said that a large economic aid package would keep unemployment below 8 percent. We now know according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that at the time of that statement unemployment was already at 8.5%. By the time the stimulus passed in February unemployment was at 8.9% and peaked in January of 2010 at 10.6% unemployment and as of May 2010 unemployment sat at 9.3% (All stats from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted). Democrats spun this as a result of the recession being worse than they expected. I wholly agree that they underestimated the recession but it should also be pointed out that those same rose tinted glasses helped get Barack Obama elected. Those same glasses helped push through the American Recovery Act and there is no excuse not to hold the stimulus to the hyperbole that got it passed through congress.
“What makes this recovery plan so important, is not just that it will create or save three-and-a-half million jobs over the next two years…it’s that we’re putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done…in critical areas that have been neglected for too long,” President Obama said at the signing [of the American Recover Act] in Denver. What makes this promise so disingenuous is that you can’t accurately measure jobs saved. This is a statistic that didn’t even exist until Barack Obama for that very reason and since then there ample examples why no one has ever tried to measure it. On June 2nd 2009 Tony Fratto lamented in a CNBC article, “the best employment statisticians the world has ever known, people whose lives are dedicated to employment data, conducting labor surveys and research, constantly refining their complex models, have a difficult time telling you how many jobs were created in the PAST!” William McGurn picked up in the Wall Street Journal on June 10th, 2009 that, ”Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved."
This was just the beginning of the jobs saved fiasco. The Sacramento Bee reported in November 2009 that, “California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states. In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.
In Fayetteville, the government website claimed, “In June, the federal government spent $1,047 in stimulus money to buy a rider mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas. Now, a report on the government’s stimulus Web site improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs.” This is just the tip of the iceberg of phony reported jobs saved by the Obama stimulus. This combined with higher unemployment rates brings down Obama’s “truthiness” rating to none.
Then let’s get into the part where Obama proclaims, ”we’re putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done.”
$500,000 went to Arizona State University to study ant genetics
Another $450,000 went to University of Arizona to study ants
$700,000 to crab fishermen in Oregon to pay for lost crab pots
$219,000 to the Nat’l Institute of Health to study if young people “hook-up” after getting drunk
$1.15 million to install a guard rail for a lake that doesn’t even exist in Oklahoma
$5 million to create a geothermal energy system for a shopping mall in Tennessee…The mall is half empty or might be considered half full from the Optimist-in-Chief.
$100,000 to a puppet theater in Minnesota
This is clearly the work that "America needs done" in the midst of a recession. Without those puppets we might be a little upset we don’t have jobs.
Then we all know the stimulus was passed with a $787 billion dollar price tag. In January of 2010 that was upgraded to an $862 billion dollar price tag continuing government’s record of underestimating the cost of everything it does.
The country isn’t exactly enamored with Obama anymore. He has dropped from 68% approval in the Gallup poll in January of 2009 to 44% approval in July of 2010. Barring some kind of historic change this is the most epic collapse of presidential approval in history. This isn’t because of a scandal or some unexpected tragedy. The American people just don’t see his policies working. The president can only go so far with the audacity of hope before the American people want a little less hoping and a little more doing. This is Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” moment.
Tyson Bam
July 10th, 2010
