Posted on 02/18/2013 4:54:25 AM PST by LD Jackson
Oh, how time flies when we are having fun. Did you realize that February 17 was the fourth anniversary of President Obama signing the highly touted $821 billion stimulus package that was funded by the tax dollars you and I had no choice in sending to Washington? A lot of promises were included with that stimulus, things like lower unemployment because of all the jobs Obama said the stimulus would either create or save. If this is what stimulus really looks like, I want no part of it. Here is what President Obama had to say at the signing ceremony in Denver.
(Human Events) In his remarks at the signing, the president said, “But today does mark the beginning of the end — the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs;the beginning of what we need to do to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills; the beginning of the first steps to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.”
President Obama said the billions of dollars in extra spending would help save our country from high unemployment, job losses, and other perceived ills. He claimed the unemployment rate would not rise above 8% because of the spending, but we all know how that has worked out. As if government can really create jobs by spending billions of dollars we do not have. That has never worked in the past and it will not work in the future. The current unemployment rate in the United States is 7.9%. It has been over 8% for 43 months, but it was "adjusted" downward, just in time for the election. One thing is clear, the stimulus had little or no affect on the unemployment rate. Another thing that is clear is that jobs were not created as a result of the money we threw down a rat hole. Billions of dollars went to repay Obama supporters via government-backed loans to their companies. Many of those companies were green energy companies and many of them are no longer in business, as they went bankrupt shortly after being infused with stimulus dollars. Yes, the Obama administration did a bang-up job of picking the winners and losers. Obama's campaign pals were the winners and the American taxpayer is the loser.
Another thing is abundantly clear. Government is a very poor substitute for the private sector, when it comes to managing money. Republican Congressman Rep. Stephen J. Scalise (R-La.) described it best.
“Time and time again President Obama’s radical big government proposals have left our nation deeper in debt and have resulted in a more sluggish economy,” he said.The said thing is, many who still believe in the Obama stimulus declare there is one main reason the stimulus didn't work as it was supposed to work. When faced with the facts of life about the stimulus, almost all of them will tell you we didn't spend enough. Yeah, that's what we need, to throw more good money down the rat hole of government intervention. Forgive me if I am not overly enthused about that theory.“Big government is the problem, not the solution. In the wake of the stimulus, Americans have suffered through higher taxes, a weak jobs market, and the worst economic recovery seen since the Great Depression,” he said.
I think that stimulus became part of the baseline spending, and thus we now spend that extra 800 billion every year. This is why the senate has refused to prepare any budget since then. If they did, us poor folk would realize the scam.
failure!........stolen goods
Sadly funny, huh? People have managed to survive losing that 2% of their FICA withholding they've had in their own pockets for the past year, but the Feds cutting about the same from their spending is the end of the world.
In my mind, the correct question is: Who can spend my money better; me or the gov’t? I can promise you my money wouldn’t go to Solindra, the Chevy Volt, or a bunch deadbeats who want a free cell phone. Now, a poll worker in Cincinnati admits to voting “multiple times” in the 2012 election, and calls herself a “freedom fighter” because of it. (If they don’t throw her butt in jail, this Republic is done.) Our gov’t takes almost a third of GNP and we’re in the toilet. And what’s the fastest growing economy today? Chile, whose gov’t takes about 5% of GNP. Kinda says something...
Good chart, but even those numbers are fudged. Unemployment, if counted the way it was counted during the great depression, would be 20% or so, maybe higher. They “seasonally adjust” the numbers to keep them where they are, the new normal.
We really are in bad shape, but all that stimulus money must be rolling through the stock market to keep it up, or something. That’s the measurement to keep us all happy and dumb. Oh, and inflation doesn’t exist either, although our new buy prices on common commodities are WAY up. Bacon for example, $1.99 is the new “stock up” price, when it used to be $.99.
So we have FAR higher unemployment than posted, FAR higher inflation than reported, hundreds of billions of dollars spent unaccountably every year.... yay Obama. Great job.
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