The Stimulus Chart Obama Doesn’t Want You to See

The rhetoric about the reduction in unemployment and the success of the stimulus has been all over the charts. The graph below shows the failure of the various stimulus plans put forth by the White House. The next time someone says that Obama created or saved jobs, ask them to name one.  

Posted by Congressman Jim Jordan

Three years ago today, President Obama signed his infamous stimulus package into law. In exchange for $1.2 trillion (including interest), liberals said their plan would bring the unemployment rate down to about 6% today. It hasn't fallen below 8% at any point in the last 36 months.

There has been a recent drop, though, which some Democrats claim as proof that their stimulus plan finally worked. But if that’s true, then where are the jobs?

The official unemployment rate doesn't actually count unemployed people who have given up looking for work. The chart below offers another look at the jobs data. It shows the “labor force participation rate,” which represents the share of working-age Americans who are either employed or unemployed but looking for work.

As you can see, only 63.7% of working-age Americans are currently in the workforce. The rate hasn’t been that low in almost 29 years! To put it another way, 36.3% of working-age Americans do not have a job and are not even looking.

Liberals think they can fabricate jobs by growing the government. What we need is to create jobs by growing the economy. That’s why conservatives in the Republican Study Committee are getting behind H.R. 3400, the Jobs Through Growth Act.

It ramps up energy production. It fights back against regulation-gone-wild. And it allows you to throw out the old tax code for one that’s simpler, flatter, and fairer.

The past three years have made clear what doesn't work. Let’s go with what does.

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“Stimulus” Just Got More Pricey

Noted With Interest: “Stimulus” Just Got More Pricey

The Congressional Budget Office, has raised the cost estimate of President Obama’s economic “stimulus” program. The office calculated it will end up costing taxpayers $821 billion, $34 billion more than originally stated.

Those are the current figures that could still change. It also does not count the interest that we’re paying on the money borrowed from the Chinese and other foreign interests to finance the package.

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Stimulus follies: $535 million down the drain in California in “green jobs”

The Obama administration made Solyndra, a solar-power manufacturing company, a symbol of its “green jobs” push in the Porkulus program. Barack Obama himself toured the factory, as did Barbara Boxer.

Taxpayers ended up sinking $535 million into building Solyndra a new facility that promised to add jobs in the clean-energy sector. Instead, now that Solyndra has its new facility, it’s closing another older facility and will lay off dozens of employees and cancel the contracts for 150 more contract workers:

In other words, we invested $535 million, a significant portion from China, into a company that apparently couldn’t compete on a price basis with its foreign competition leaving us on the hook for the investment

Solyndra did all right though; they got a nice new facility and now can dump their old plant. The old building will sit vacant for a long time in all likelihood while Solyndra downsizes and attempts to stay in business at their taxpayer-funded digs.

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It’s an object lesson in the incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats to pick winners and losers in private markets.

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Current Federal Budget Trends Are Capable Of Destroying This Country

The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History?

Current Federal Budget Trends Remain Unsustainable

Me Worry? I'm On Vacation

There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent).

Where Do You All Think I should
Go For Next Weeks Vacation?  

There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to imagine. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.

Read More: US News & World Report

Stimulus Programs Hobbled By Antiquated Regulations

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, P.L. 111-5 was signed into law on Feb. 17, 2009. The purpose of the $787 billion recovery package is to jump-start the economy and create and save jobs. It provides tax relief and increases or extends health benefits, unemployment benefits and renewable energy incentives. 

But these funds come with many strings. Projects funded under the Recovery Act are subject to unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability. The Recovery Act requires extensive reporting from the prime recipients. Special terms and conditions are included in covered contracts to track, monitor and report on how funds are spent.

Many private companies are unaccustomed to sharing their internal data, including allowing the world (not to mention customers and competitors) to see how much their top executives are paid. The Recovery Act also includes Buy American Act requirements, extends the reach of Davis-Bacon labor standards (Prevailing Wage), expands access of the GAO and the various offices of Inspectors General to contractor records, and creates an independent board to coordinate and conduct oversight of covered funds to prevent fraud, waste and abuse.

Millions of Construction Contractors are disinterested due to the excessive wage requirements and antiquated regulations attached.

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