I Don't Think the Stimulus is Working

[Meister]

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:

Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:

Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.

I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

So we ignore the reports from Fox, CBS, ABC and elsewhere and believe the administration when they tell us they're doing a great job?

You're serious about that aren't you.

Yes he is....hook, line, and sinker.

 

[hylandrdet]

Wonder why the stimulus package that was supposed to create so many good jobs that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go past 7.5% hasn’t created many good jobs and the unemployment rate continues to be stuck around 9.5%? Meanwhile Europe’s economy continues to boom. Even Germany that normally has high unemployment rates can boast a 7.5% rate this summer.

So what’s wrong?

Well some of the projects the stimulus money has gone for:

A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it

$6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.

Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glasboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million

$2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants

A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars

$141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs

$762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.

$89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Source: Republicans: Stimulus Money Spent on Wasteful Projects | Foxnews.com

One analysis I’ve seen that so far what private sector jobs have been created have been at a cost exceeding $300,000 per job.

But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance.

Honestly people. Don’t you think we should expect better of our government than this?

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs
http://business-news.thestreet.com/...QZTw/small-businesses-still-reluctant-to.html

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

fact- the republican party is derailing the path to create new jobs by filibusting a bill that will provide tax cuts to small businesses.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press...ose-new-small-business-jobs-and-wages-tax-cut

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Half the money hasn't been spent yet, and it was an emergency to pass the bill or the whole world would collapse.

 

[Meister]

Wonder why the stimulus package that was supposed to create so many good jobs that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go past 7.5% hasn’t created many good jobs and the unemployment rate continues to be stuck around 9.5%? Meanwhile Europe’s economy continues to boom. Even Germany that normally has high unemployment rates can boast a 7.5% rate this summer.

So what’s wrong?

Well some of the projects the stimulus money has gone for:

A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it

$6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.

Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glasboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million

$2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants

A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars

$141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs

$762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.

$89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Source: Republicans: Stimulus Money Spent on Wasteful Projects | Foxnews.com

One analysis I’ve seen that so far what private sector jobs have been created have been at a cost exceeding $300,000 per job.

But Obama and the Dems in Congress refuse to consider using unspent stimulus money to cover costs of extending unemployment insurance which the Republicans have asked for in lieu of increasing the deficit even more.. Instead they accuse the Republicans of blocking extension of unemployment insurance.

Honestly people. Don’t you think we should expect better of our government than this?

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

Wow, I didn't see this one coming.
It's us....not the obama policies. Right......got it.

Have you asked yourself....why people have quit looking for jobs?
Have you asked yourself....why businesses are afraid to hire?
Geeeze

 

[saveliberty]

Amazing how these kind loving liberals will spend their children and grandchildren into poverty.

 

[Foxfyre]

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

In my business I deal with mostly small businesses including a lot of contractors.

First a short term project like installing windows in a closed building provides work for at most a few days. The administration can claim 'jobs created' for those few days but you soon have everybody back on the unemployment roles. There is no way anybody will convince me that such government spending stimulates anything more than the deficit and national debt. And they are being counted as 'jobs created' and they shouldn't be.

Is it better than paying unemployment for those few days? Not if the taxpayer doesn't get full value for the dollars spent.

So according to your own link here:
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
the red tape, required environmental studies etc., per usual mean that government contracts will see many delays and many didn't happen last year or this year and will finally be implemented in subsequent years and the blame for that is squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government.

So back to those small businesses, they're telling me they aren't going to get ambitious about much of anything until they know what the tax consequences will be next year and beyond or what the healthcare mandates will do to them, etc. etc. etc. The government keeps moving the markers from week to week and that isn't anybody but the government's fault either.

You don't roll the dice if you don't know what the payoff is going to be. And you sure don't roll the dice if it means you have to pay even more than what you are prepared to gamble.

 

[Wry Catcher]

But consider, most of those projects spent funds on goods and services, and isn't that stimulating the economy?

No. It's simply redistributing money from one place to another. If we had a stimulated economy we wouldn't have unemployment in the teens.

Isn't wealth redistributed everyday in America? When a bank loans money on credit cards at 18% and pays less than 1% in interest on deposits, isn't that a redistribution of wealth? Aren't laws which protect lenders - and bail them out as did Bush in 2008 with tax payer money - a redistribution of wealth?
Why does the RW have a corner on morons?

 

[Wry Catcher]

Amazing how these kind loving liberals will spend their children and grandchildren into poverty.

Damn right, Bush and the neo-conservatives spent our children into poverty with unnecessary war but had the foresight to at least kill off 5,000 or so of them so they wouldn't have to live in poverty.
And hell, those who lost legs and arms and vision were likely to be poor anyway.

 

[Foxfyre]

Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.

I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UFiQIwwJbE]YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎[/ame]

 

[Wry Catcher]

Half the money hasn't been spent yet, and it was an emergency to pass the bill or the whole world would collapse.

If the money had been spent as conceived, it is likely the economy would have been stimulated as hoped.
Be aware, the worst is yet to come. The Republican Party has offered no solution to our on-going economic problem and is running on the same old theory, tax cuts are a panacia for all ills.
The 'Tea Party' has offered no platform either, for it has no real leader and is essentially a new iteration of the Dixiecrats States Rights Democratic Party and the American Independent Party of George Wallace.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.

I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:

YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

 

[Foxfyre]

Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.

I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:

YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Well apparently a lot of years of my taxes went to study ants somewhere in South America where no American jobs were created or to study dinosaur eggs in China where no American jobs were created.

And your post illustrates in spades that you have never been a business owner and don't know the first thing about it. No offense.

 

[boedicca]

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Complete and utter poppycock. Most small business are either sole proprieterships or partnerships that are taxed at individual tax rates.

Obama allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire will cause these small businesses to pay income taxes at higher rates than do Mega Corps. The highest Corporate tax rate is 35%. Small businesses will pay 39.6% plus an additional 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge once that kicks in.

 

[Foxfyre]

Damn I wish I could rep you for this one Boe, but gotta spread some around first. And I don't mean wealth.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Congratulations to WryCatcher for being the first to evoke Foxfyre's Law of W.

I found this. If it really is a trailer for a movie coming out this Fall, it should be a doozy:

YouTube - ‪I Want Your Money Trailer (HD)‬‎

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Well apparently a lot of years of my taxes went to study ants somewhere in South America where no American jobs were created or to study dinosaur eggs in China where no American jobs were created.

And your post illustrates in spades that you have never been a business owner and don't know the first thing about it. No offense.

No offense taken. My sense that your post is not responsive doesn't surprise me. You are correct, I've never been a small business owner. But, I supervised an employee during the time he planned for and eventually opened a small restaurant and have a good idea of where the money went even before he earned any income.
As for your comment on ants and eggs, I agree many small and not so small scientific studies seem absurd. Not knowing the goal of such studies makes it easy to dismiss them with a cavalier attitude, yet, what if such studies lead to cures for disease?

 

[Foxfyre]

If you are a small business owner Foxfyre, explain to the readers where the taxes you pay go and for what. Small business being hammered by federal taxes is a canard, the burden on small business comes in the form of fees, taxes, assessments, etc paid to local and sometimes state governemnt.
As for my pointing out GWB was the one who signed the legislation bailing out the too big to fail, I do so not in blame, but to counter the blame Obama receives from the RW purveyors of propaganda who suggest by innuendo that Obama and not Bush is responsible for the bail out. And, btw, Bush did the correct thing, though those who recieved the largess did not.

Well apparently a lot of years of my taxes went to study ants somewhere in South America where no American jobs were created or to study dinosaur eggs in China where no American jobs were created.

And your post illustrates in spades that you have never been a business owner and don't know the first thing about it. No offense.

No offense taken. My sense that your post is not responsive doesn't surprise me. You are correct, I've never been a small business owner. But, I supervised an employee during the time he planned for and eventually opened a small restaurant and have a good idea of where the money went even before he earned any income.
As for your comment on ants and eggs, I agree many small and not so small scientific studies seem absurd. Not knowing the goal of such studies makes it easy to dismiss them with a cavalier attitude, yet, what if such studies lead to cures for disease?

Well, if you want to play the 'what if' game, what if the government didn't take so much in taxes and would guarantee businesses that the tax rates would remain stable for the next X number of years so those businesses could afford to plan and expand and grow and hire millions of currently unemployed people?

Go back to Boedicca's post on tax rates. It spells out the consequences of letting the Bush tax cuts expire plus the new taxes proposed for healthcare and what Obama wants to do with energy. The government has set so many different earnings threshholds now for the proposed tax structure that nobody with a clue believes anything they say about it any more.

In my opinion, the recession would effecively end within the next few days or weeks if. . .
The Obama administration would announce:
1. All unspent stimulus monies will be returned to the treasury to reduce the deficit and will be untouchable.
2. The healthcare reform will be suspended until the Congress can achieve a true bipartisan agreement on what needs to be done.
3. The Cap & Trade legislation is going on the back burner and it will not be ressurrected until there is bipartisan support to deal with it.
4. The Bush tax policy will remain in effect for at least the next five years.

And President Obama would see his approval ratings go through the roof.

 

[code1211]

If we accept as true the examples provided by Fox, it is clear that they are some of the more egregious and silly expenditures of stimulus funds. And, of course that is the intent of Fox, not to inform but to put forth their political agenda.
But consider, most of those projects spent funds on goods and services, and isn't that stimulating the economy? People & Business earn income, which was spent on rent, food and other goods and services and taxes were paid and returned to local, state and Federal coffers. No matter how silly the OP wants this to appear it did what it was autorized to do.
I see, everyday, construction sites where workers and heavy machinary, manufactured goods - steal and concrete - are being used as part of the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act to build and improve roads, bridges and transportation systems, parts of our infrastructure ignored for decades and in decay.

Remember, as President Obama said today, "if you get into a car and want to go forward, put the car in D; if you wish to go backwards, select R.

I live in Indianapolis. There are very few construction projects under way in this area at this time. I moved here in 1992. I remarked to my wife at that time that there were cranes everywhere and that continued until this recession started.

You know what? None of those projects had signs stating that the government was paying for them.

As long as all of the construction projects we see have an advertisment posted for Socialism, we are are in very deep poop. When the construction programs are financed by people who are looking to make a buck because they have faith in the future, the recession will be over.

What you see as success is actually dismal failure. This country is led by a man who thinks exactly as you do. His definition of success is failure. It's unfortunate, but it's true. As long as this clown is in charge, we don't have a chance.

The role of our government is not to create success but to allow it. If the government is the only thing creating success, by definition, we as a country are failing. It means that it will not allow success and must pick up the whip and use on the dead horse.

It looks like things are just going to become more and more dismal as this year progresses to the election. That might be good in that the power monopoly in DC will be dismantled. I hope that too much damage will not have been done and that the damaging programs passed can be amended or repealed.

 

[code1211]

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals:

Create new jobs and save existing ones
Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
The Recovery Act intends to achieve those goals by:

Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion
Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans
Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on how they are using the money. All the data is posted on Recovery.gov so the public can track the Recovery funds.

I suggest those who want to be informed read the link to Recovery.gov and not take Fox News and Foxfyer as the final word. Cherry picked stats and facts may fool some of the people all of the time (a shout-out to CrusaderFrank and Stepanie) but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Were you employed and selling stuff in the mid 90's? That's what a recovery feels like.

This is no recovery. This is a recession. It's not getting better. It's getting worse. The guy in charge has gotten everything he has sought to lead us to recovery and he is failing.

If there is a recovery, you don't need statistics to tell you it's happening. You will see it in privately funded construction projects, cities and states flush with tax revenues, growing and reinvigorated neighborhoods and politicians crowing about their success in creating jobs that they had nothing to do with.

If there is a failed recovery you will see it in the loss of jobs, houses and storefronts empty, cities and states laying off employees and shutting down programs and politicians feeling our pain and extending unemployment benefits.

By your own observations, is this a recovery or a failed recovery?

 

[boedicca]

Well, if you want to play the 'what if' game, what if the government didn't take so much in taxes and would guarantee businesses that the tax rates would remain stable for the next X number of years so those businesses could afford to plan and expand and grow and hire millions of currently unemployed people?

Go back to Boedicca's post on tax rates. It spells out the consequences of letting the Bush tax cuts expire plus the new taxes proposed for healthcare and what Obama wants to do with energy. The government has set so many different earnings threshholds now for the proposed tax structure that nobody with a clue believes anything they say about it any more.

In my opinion, the recession would effecively end within the next few days or weeks if. . .
The Obama administration would announce:
1. All unspent stimulus monies will be returned to the treasury to reduce the deficit and will be untouchable.
2. The healthcare reform will be suspended until the Congress can achieve a true bipartisan agreement on what needs to be done.
3. The Cap & Trade legislation is going on the back burner and it will not be ressurrected until there is bipartisan support to deal with it.
4. The Bush tax policy will remain in effect for at least the next five years.

And President Obama would see his approval ratings go through the roof.

Let's add a few more:

- 10% cut in non-military employee levels immediately
- Salary freeze for federal workers making more than the average salary in the private sector
- Get rid of Public Employee pensions, let them use 401ks and pay into Social Security like the rest of us
- Raise the retirement age to receive full benefits for residual pension holders to the same levels as those of full SS payments
- Begin privatizing SS
- Federal hiring freeze until the budget is balanced
- TARP repayments used to pay down debt.

 

[hylandrdet]

The problem is not in Washington, it's us.

Fact- nobody is going out to find jobs
More people stop looking for work- Market Dispatches - MSN Money

Fact- Small businesses are too scared to create jobs

Fact- States like mine, Tennessee, aren't spending the stimulus money the way they were suppose to.
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal

I hate to say this, but it appears that America, as a whole, decided to either go on a vacation or go on strike. This is not President Obama's fault, it's ours.

We don't have the balls to roll the dice. Food for thought.

In my business I deal with mostly small businesses including a lot of contractors.

First a short term project like installing windows in a closed building provides work for at most a few days. The administration can claim 'jobs created' for those few days but you soon have everybody back on the unemployment roles. There is no way anybody will convince me that such government spending stimulates anything more than the deficit and national debt. And they are being counted as 'jobs created' and they shouldn't be.

Is it better than paying unemployment for those few days? Not if the taxpayer doesn't get full value for the dollars spent.

So according to your own link here:
Study: Tennessee lags in stimulus spending - Nashville Business Journal
the red tape, required environmental studies etc., per usual mean that government contracts will see many delays and many didn't happen last year or this year and will finally be implemented in subsequent years and the blame for that is squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government.

So back to those small businesses, they're telling me they aren't going to get ambitious about much of anything until they know what the tax consequences will be next year and beyond or what the healthcare mandates will do to them, etc. etc. etc. The government keeps moving the markers from week to week and that isn't anybody but the government's fault either.

You don't roll the dice if you don't know what the payoff is going to be. And you sure don't roll the dice if it means you have to pay even more than what you are prepared to gamble.

Note the bold
I don't see that in my link; that's your speculation. Please refrain from doing that without informing us.

My point was clear; you can't judge the effects of the stimulus bill until all of the money has been spent. For Sen. Bob Corker, or any other republican politician, to tell us that the stimulus bill will fail, meanwhile, their states are hardly spending any of the money given to them, is misrepresenting the facts.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2008/jan/30/corker-slams-economic-stimulus-bill-again/?print

Simple question: How can you say that this Stimulus bill had failed when the states refuse to spend the money? Food for thought