It's Official: The Stimulus Isn't a Waste of Money

[Dick Tuck]

It's Official: The Stimulus Isn't a Waste of Money

People of good faith can disagree over whether President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package is creating enough jobs, piling on too much debt or helping the country in the long run. But it's about time to retire one set of critiques of the stimulus: that it would be riddled with fraud, hamstrung by delays and crippled by cost overruns. So far, while the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is clearly not a political success, it is just as clearly a managerial success — on schedule, under budget and, according to independent investigators, remarkably free of fraud.

On Sept. 30, the Administration met its self-imposed deadline of spending 70% of the Recovery Act funds, $551 billion, by the end of the fiscal year. Almost all of the unspent stimulus money is already committed to specific projects, except for a few longer-range initiatives like high-speed rail and electronic health records. And the completed work has cost less than expected, so the savings have financed more than 3,000 additional projects, from airport improvements in Atlanta to new child-care centers at military bases in Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi and Oklahoma, from a new five-lane road in Jacksonville, Fla., to a $14.5 million transformation of a World War II ammunition factory into an eco-friendly government building in St. Louis.

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[william the wie]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

 

[Oddball]

It's never a waste of money when those funds end up in the pockets of gubmint bureaucrats!

 

[elvis]

Put the fucking lotion in the basket!!!

 

[Charles_Main]

200k per job is worth it. Yep!

 

[Dick Tuck]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

 

[Oddball]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

You cannot prove positive results with negative evidence.

Even the pencil pilots at the CBO should know this.

 

[Dick Tuck]

200k per job is worth it. Yep!

Depends what that job was to do, don't you think?

 

[Charles_Main]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

You mean like that Bench Mark that unemployment would not go above 8% if we passed it?

Yeah that worked out GREAT!

 

[william the wie]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

Judging by the posts that followed the above I would say my opinion about how convincing your argument is has been proven.

 

[SFC Ollie]

What was the deadline on unemployment again? We know this administration can spend money, that's why they wanted a second stimulus........

 

[Dick Tuck]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

You mean like that Bench Mark that unemployment would not go above 8% if we passed it?

Yeah that worked out GREAT!

No, but that benchmark was based on expert opinion that by doing nothing unemployment would reach 10%, and was arrived at only within weeks of Obama taking office. Things were much worse than thought, and instead of hitting 10%, unemployment would have reached 11.5-12%. It turns out that Freidman, who had the most dire prediction was closest to being right. What would you have done? Many thought we should have just invested more money.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Nobody is going to be convinced by those citations until and unless unemployment gets below 6%

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

Judging by the posts that followed the above I would say my opinion about how convincing your argument is has been proven.

Except that your mistaken in your terms. 8% wasn't a benchmark, it was an estimate based on consensus view that doing nothing would cause unemployment to reach 10%. The estimates turned out to be too conservative.

 

[007]

Pfft... coming from Time/CNN... what a crock of liberal bull shit.

The stimulus was a fuck up of epic proportions. Any rational, thinking person can see that. Keep your liberal hack website lies.

 

[Dick Tuck]

 

[The Rabbi]

ZThe "stimulus" was the greatest failure in modern government known. The European countries did not stimulate to the same extent we did and they recovered much fast. This program is shot through with fraud and waste, examples coming to the fore every day.
The Dums can put all the happy face they want on it. The facts are the facts and the numbers don't lie.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Report: Stimulus a Success; Complaints on Contracts Down

...

Of the 200,000 contract awards, independent review boards have received complaints on 3,806 of them – less than 2 percent. And an even smaller number have resulted in criminal investigations.

Stan Soloway, who serves as the president of the Professional Services Council, a national trade association for government contractors, told The Post the smooth rollout of the stimulus showed the administration was prepared.

“Given the ambitious nature of the stimulus, the fact that things have gone relatively smoothly suggests that they did put appropriate and adequate resources” into program oversight, he told The Post. “They definitely deserve credit for that,” he said.​

 

[william the wie]

CBO is reporting that unemployment would be 1.5-2% higher, had it not been for the stimulus. But the fact remains that all required benchmarks were met, proposals for projects came in under estimate, the howls on waste and fraud turned out to be false, and there was enough money left over to fund 3,000 additional infrastructure projects.

Judging by the posts that followed the above I would say my opinion about how convincing your argument is has been proven.

Except that your mistaken in your terms. 8% wasn't a benchmark, it was an estimate based on consensus view that doing nothing would cause unemployment to reach 10%. The estimates turned out to be too conservative.

Since I never considered the 8% mark anything but political BS you are addressing the wrong person and wrong issue. How do you plan to convince anyone who does not already believe so that your OP is defensible?

 

[Dick Tuck]

What was the deadline on unemployment again? We know this administration can spend money, that's why they wanted a second stimulus........

You are aware that the job producing part of this isn't close to being in full force yet, don't you?

 

[The Rabbi]

What was the deadline on unemployment again? We know this administration can spend money, that's why they wanted a second stimulus........

You are aware that the job producing part of this isn't close to being in full force yet, don't you?

So what part have they finished? The money wasting part? They did a fine job with that.
ANd if the "job producing part" (I thought that was the whole point of this exercise??) isn't done, why did the Administration promise unemployment would be under 9% and it is nowhere near that?