Repackaging Won’t Help Sell ARRA
President Obama is finding out that his rhetorical abilities won’t exempt him from criticism when his policies don’t produce as he predicted. He’s spent yesterday and today trying to put lipstick on one of the ugliest pigs in recent history. People aren’t buying it. Still, he’s got to keep going to the well:
President Barack Obama assured the nation his recovery plan was on track Monday, scrambling to calm Americans unnerved by unemployment rates still persistently rising nearly four months after he signed the biggest economic stimulus in history.
Obama admitted his own dissatisfaction with the progress but said his administration would ramp up stimulus spending in the coming months. The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent, of the $787 billion stimulus, but that total has always been expected to rise sharply this summer.
“Now we’re in a position to really accelerate,” Obama said.
He also repeated an earlier promise to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.
Creating or saving 600,000 jobs by summer’s end sounds nice but it’s an unimpressive number, especially when you consider that 125,000 of those jobs are temp jobs. If ARRA created 600,000 new jobs that were sustainable, then I’d be impressed. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
That won’t happen as a result of ARRA, either, because creating sustainable jobs requires entrepreneurial activity. What sane investor is willing to put their money at risk knowing that President Obama will either tax your profits into nonexistence or change the rules of the game because it’s to his political allies’ benefit?
If the Supreme Court rules in the government’s favor, it will give the executive branch the authority to rewrite any contract it wants. This is just plain wrong. That’s why bankruptcy courts were established where, theoretically, their rulings are based on evidence presented at trial and on established bankruptcy laws.
Having the White House rewriting contracts is an appalling idea because they might, as they appear to have done in this instance, rewrite contracts for purely political reasons. This administration hasn’t hesitated in ignoring the laws when it helps their political allies.
But I digress.
The stimulus plan wasn’t designed to jumpstart the economy. It was designed to increase government spending. This article breaks down an earlier version of the bill but it’s still fairly accurate. According to this article, $40,800,000,000 is appropriated to health insurance assistance for the unemployed, another $89,700,000,000 is appropriated to a temporary increase in federal medical assistance. Another $27,100,000,000 is appropriated to extending unemployment benefits.
While it’s possible to debate whether these appropriations are justified, what isn’t possible is debating whether they’ll create jobs or spur increased entrepreneurial activity. In my opinion, that isn’t a debate. Debates require intellectual rigor. Whether ARRA spurs increased entrepreneurial activity requires just a simple recitation of the appropriations. That’s all that’s need to make my case.
There is some news from the White House:
For the first time, the administration admitted the economic forecasts it used to sell the stimulus were overly optimistic. “At the time, our forecast seemed reasonable,” Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said Monday, explaining that the White House underestimated the scope of the recession. “Now, looking back, it was clearly too optimistic.”
Yes, their predictions were overly optimistic. In fact, it’s reasonable to question whether their predictions weren’t outright fabrications. The Obama administration was alone in predicting robust growth so quickly. King had a particularly fun time with this graphic:
Some analysts believe the White House is still not being realistic, that Obama will be lucky if any real job creation from his recovery effort is seen by the end of the year, let alone the employment explosion he predicts. “I think these estimates are overly optimistic,” said Arpitha Bykere, a senior analyst with RGE Monitor.
That’s politespeak for “That’s a bunch of crap.” There’s no reason to trust this bunch. They’re better at politicking than they are about policies. BY ALOT!!! I’ve been asking why people trust this bunch ever since the dog ate Little Timmy’s lunch.
Now the Obama administration wants us to think that they’re being serious about the deficit because they’re interested in returning to PAYGO. Here’s what Leader Boehner thinks about that:
PAYGO is a thinly-veiled excuse for Democrats to raise taxes in order to bankroll more wasteful government spending. And who will pay? The American middle class. Time after time this year, Democrats have ignored calls for fiscal responsibility and added more than a trillion dollars to our deficit, all of which will be paid by working families and their kids and grandkids. In the coming weeks, they plan to raise taxes to finance a government takeover of health care, once again putting a bulls-eye on the backs of the American middle class. We don’t need more rhetoric and gimmicks. We need action to tackle the tremendous fiscal challenges facing this nation, including reining in the Democrats’ budget plan for trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
Here’s Mike Pence’s thoughts on PAYGO:
Later today, President Barack Obama will push Democrat lawmakers to follow pay-as-you-go budget rules. Now, PAYGO rules, as they’re known, in theory would require new federal spending or tax cuts be offset by spending cuts or even tax increases elsewhere. This may sound reasonable to some Americans, but the devil’s always in the details.
The American people have reason to be skeptical about newfound calls for fiscal responsibility from this majority. Under Democrat control, the federal budget deficit is projected to approach nearly $2 trillion. In the last several years, non-defense spending has increased by 85 percent. The budget the President and congressional Democrats just passed will double the national debt in five years and triple it in ten years.
And now they are calling for new budget rules? With Democrat plans for more borrowing, more spending, more bailouts and more debt, the Democrat definition of PAYGO is all too clear to the American people: you pay, and they go on spending.
We know that President Obama won’t slow their spending so the only way they can do health care is if they raise taxes. Don’t think that raising taxes on the rich will pay for that monstrosity, either. They’ll have to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for us to ’save’ money on health care.
As Allahpundit likes to say: What could go wrong?
The Obama administration won’t like me saying this but they won’t be judged on President Obama’s speaking ability. They’ll be judged solely on their solutions.
Technorati Tags: Economy, President Obama, Tim Geithner, ARRA, Paygo, Tax Increases, Democrats, John Boehner, Mike Pence, Conservatism
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 11th, 2009 at 12:36 am
I was driving up to Travis AFB last weekend. We hit heavy traffic just south of Fairfield. I drove past a sign declaring that the construction project was funded by ARRA.
Got to Air Base Blvd a half hour later. There was not a single construction vehicle or worker in sight.
That pretty much sums up what ARRA does: spends our money on nothing. I also find it very difficult to believe that any construction on I-80 was not already funded by DOT before ARRA. There is no freaking way that project was “shovel ready” and unfunded.