By Ralph R. Reiland on 11.10.09 @ 6:06AM
The U.S. economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since passage of the
$787 billion "stimulus" package.
What the Democrats should have learned from their losses last
Tuesday is that the advice given by political strategist James
Carville to candidate Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential
campaign is still valid -- "It's the economy, stupid."
More specifically, what hurt Democrats at the polls is the lack
of new jobs and the flood of red ink -- plus the doctor-bashing
as a strategy to enact Obamacare, the push to cancel a worker's
right to a secret ballot during unionization drives, the promise
of skyrocketing utility rates via cap-and-trade mandates, and the
prospect of higher taxes, more regulations and less liberty by
way of an ever-increasing intrusion by government into every
aspect of our lives.
And it didn't help to have one after another of those commie
czars pop up in the West Wing. Each time a new pinko was
unearthed, I couldn't help thinking of that Wack-a-Mole game on
the boardwalk where you try to smash mechanical moles as hard and
quickly as possible with oversized mallets as they pop up from
their holes.
On the issue that was tops with Tuesday's voters, the shortage of
new jobs and the continuing increase in the unemployment rate,
President Obama pushed earlier this year for a "stimulus" plan as
the way to turn the economy around, along with a program of more
red ink, bigger government, expanded borrowing from foreign
lenders, and a record-breaking deficit.
"I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving 4
million jobs," said President Obama on February 9, calling for
quick approval of a "stimulus" bill. Instead, things moved in the
opposite direction and the U.S. economy lost 2.7 million jobs
since President Obama signed the $787 billion "stimulus" package
into law on February 17.
By including the dodgy language of "saved" jobs in the definition
of job creation, the White House made it impossible to get an
accurate "measure of success" of the administration's strategy to
expand employment.
Any entity on the receiving end of government money under the
"stimulus" had a clear incentive to overstate the number of jobs
it "saved" in order to get at the top of the list for a second
round of giveaways under Stimulus-II.
Still, utilizing detailed numbers in order to provide the
illusion of accuracy, the White House claimed that exactly
640,329 jobs had been "created or saved" because of the $159
billion in "stimulus" funds that had been allocated as of
September 30.
Even buying this likely-inflated "measure of success" from the
Obama administration, that's a price tag of $248,000 per job.
That is more than 5 times the median annual earnings for men in
the American economy who are working full-time, year-round, and
over 7 times the median annual earnings for women who are working
full-time, year-round.
Appraising the "stimulus" results in rousing terms, Vice
President Joe Biden told the nation's governors, "In my wildest
dreams, I never thought it would work this well."
Stating it in different terms, more concretely, more truthfully,
Vice President Biden could have told the governors that he could
never have imagined in his wildest dreams that he would one day
end up so crazy, so crooked, that he would boast about the
efficiency and goodness of creating employment at a cost of
$248,000 per job and sticking a guy making $45,000 a year with
the tab, either by way of higher taxation or putting him further
in the hole to China.
