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Advocates of fiscal responsibility should restrain any excitement over the $83 billion in spending Senators have eliminated from the "stimulus" bill. Indeed, the Senate's $838 billion price tag is still $19 billion larger than the House version. Although there are some differences between the two, the House and Senate versions of the bill both:
* Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
* Contribute to a $3.5 trillion expansion of federal debt in 2009 and 2010--a staggering $30,000 in new debt per household, dumped into the laps of our children and grandchildren[1];
* Begin subsidizing health insurance for unemployed Americans regardless of income;
* Spend $650 million on digital television converter box subsidies;
* Create more than 30 new federal programs; and
* Radically expand antipoverty spending and weaken the hugely successful 1996 welfare reforms.[2]
Economists Critical Across the Spectrum
The Obama Administration has claimed that virtually all economists support their approach to "stimulus" spending.[6] This is patently untrue. Nobel Laureates Ed Prescott, James Buchanan, and Vernon Smith recently joined 200 other economists signing a letter opposing the legislation.[7] Other notable economists critical of the stimulus package include Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, Robert Barro, Greg Mankiw, Arthur Laffer, and Larry Lindsey. More liberal economists such as Alice Rivlin and Alan Blinder have also strongly criticized certain aspects of the spending bill.
Even President Obama's own economic advisors--who are leading the fight for the "stimulus" bill--previously criticized the bill's economic underpinnings. Before becoming chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer wrote that "countercyclical fiscal policy is not achieving its intended purpose." Why? "t is difficult for fiscal policy to respond quickly to economic developments."[8] Presidential economic advisor Jason Furman has also criticized infrastructure "stimulus," having written that "n the past, infrastructure projects that were initiated as the economy started to weaken did not involve substantial amounts of spending until after the economy had recovered."[9]
White House's National Economic Council Director Larry Summers joined in, writing a year ago that "[P]oorly provided fiscal stimulus can have worse side effects than the disease that is to be cured.... [F]iscal stimulus, to be maximally effective, must be clearly and credibly temporary--with no significant adverse impact on the deficit for more than a year or so after implementation. Otherwise it risks being counterproductive by raising the spectre of enlarged future deficits pushing up longer-term interest rates and undermining confidence and longer-term growth prospects."[10]
Not to be outdone, the President's budget director, Peter Orszag--who was previously head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)--oversaw a 2008 CBO report stating, "Large-scale construction projects of any type require years of planning and preparation. Even those that are 'on the shelf' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy."[11]
That same CBO has joined the chorus of critics by recently releasing a report projecting that the "stimulus" will worsen the long-run performance of the economy.[12]
The simple reality is that Congress does not have a vault of money to distribute into the economy. Therefore, every dollar lawmakers "inject" into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy, leaving total demand unchanged. If government borrows the money from American investors, investment spending drops accordingly. If it is borrowed from foreigners, net exports drop accordingly. Even money redistributed from "savers" to "spenders" ignores the fact that savings circulate through the investment spending side of the economy--which counts just as much as consumer spending in the Gross Domestic Product.[13
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
That is a purposefully misleading way of describing this spending.
Why?
Well, if one puts billions into building a thing, and then one divides the full cost of that build ONLY by the number of employees who'd built it, you're basically ascribing the ONLY the labor costs to the overall cost of investment.
Highly misleading and terribly inaccurate.
How does one ascribe to this created job, the costs (about $450 Billion) of those tax cuts for example?
Pure nonsense, that is.
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
That is a purposefully misleading way of describing this spending.
Why?
Well, if one puts billions into building a thing, and then one divides the full cost of that build ONLY by the number of employees who'd built it, you're basically ascribing the ONLY the labor costs to the overall cost of investment.
Highly misleading and terribly inaccurate.
How does one ascribe to this created job, the costs (about $450 Billion) of those tax cuts for example?
Pure nonsense, that is.
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
That is a purposefully misleading way of describing this spending.
Why?
Well, if one puts billions into building a thing, and then one divides the full cost of that build ONLY by the number of employees who'd built it, you're basically ascribing the ONLY the labor costs to the overall cost of investment.
Highly misleading and terribly inaccurate.
How does one ascribe to this created job, the costs (about $450 Billion) of those tax cuts for example?
Pure nonsense, that is.
Support for the stimulus package breaks along party lines with 70 percent of self-identified Democrats calling the plan a good idea and only 24 percent of Republicans saying the same. Independents were split 49 percent in favor and 36 percent against.
Exactly - there was never a consensus but just the opposite. For Obama to stand before the American people and say "almost all economists agree..." shows his vested interest in outright lying to us.
Economists are screaming warnings all across the nation regarding this economic abomination.
http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
That is a purposefully misleading way of describing this spending.
Why?
Well, if one puts billions into building a thing, and then one divides the full cost of that build ONLY by the number of employees who'd built it, you're basically ascribing the ONLY the labor costs to the overall cost of investment.
Highly misleading and terribly inaccurate.
How does one ascribe to this created job, the costs (about $450 Billion) of those tax cuts for example?
Pure nonsense, that is.
Spend approximately $223,000 per job created, using the President's own figures;
That is a purposefully misleading way of describing this spending.
Why?
Well, if one puts billions into building a thing, and then one divides the full cost of that build ONLY by the number of employees who'd built it, you're basically ascribing the ONLY the labor costs to the overall cost of investment.
Highly misleading and terribly inaccurate.
How does one ascribe to this created job, the costs (about $450 Billion) of those tax cuts for example?
Pure nonsense, that is.
As if Obama is not misleading... because now all the sudden it is not just him 'creating' that amount of jobs... but 'creating or saving'.. something that is not quantifiable so that he can claim victory and pull more numbers out of his ass
Exactly. Sorry, road crews for the state really don't need that many people, and those jobs are terrible, dangerous jobs which are typically temporary. And that's his repeated reference for creating jobs. Improving infrastructure.
.
So what your telling me is the Republicans are full of shit?
