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Lead Balloon: Romer ‘Stimulus’ Spin Rejected By Taxpayers, Small Businesses
GOP Leader: “No Amount Of Fuzzy Math Can Change The Fact That The ‘Stimulus’ Is Failing By The Obama Administration’s Own Standards.”
Washington
(Jul 14)
If the White House is indeed “searching for ways to reconnect” with taxpayers on the economy, trotting out one of the chief architects of the ineffective trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ to present more “creative math” may not be the best way to go about doing that.
The President’s chief economic adviser, Christina Romer, will appear on Capitol Hill this afternoon before the Joint Economic Committee to tout a ‘stimulus’ that only 13 percent of Americans say has “helped them personally.” She’s specifically expected to talk about how government ‘stimulus’ dollars have helped “leverage” private investment. Except:
- Since February 2009, when the ‘stimulus’ was signed into law, our economy has lost more than three million private sector jobs while the federal government has grown by more than 400,000 jobs. More government, fewer jobs: this isn’t the picture of recovery, it’s the epitome of failure.
- Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that federal regulators need to be doing more “to ensure that small businesses get the credit they need to create jobs.”
- Small business owners don’t see much ‘leveraging’ going on, either. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently released a survey in which nearly six in 10 small business owners say “the administration does not have a clear plan for creating jobs.”
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) responded to the Obama Administration’s latest round of ‘stimulus’ spin and “creative math”:
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“No amount of Washington spin or fuzzy math can change the fact that the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ is failing by the Obama Administration’s own standards. The writing is on the wall for the president’s ‘stimulus’ policies and everyone – taxpayers, economists, and the rest of the world – sees it but him. The American people have had enough of Washington Democrats’ job-killing spending spree and want better solutions, which is what Republicans are offering.”
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The American people are asking ‘where are the jobs?,’ and in survey, after survey, after survey, they are saying that the president’s policies are doing more harm than good, and they lack confidence in his ability to turn things around. Given Dr. Romer’s several ‘stimulus’ contradictions, it’s not hard to figure out why the American people have tuned out the Obama Administration:
- Unemployment. Dr. Romer is the co-author of the infamous January 2009 report (and chart) that projected the unemployment rate would not exceed eight percent if President Obama’s ‘stimulus’ plan was passed. This February, roughly a year after the ‘stimulus’ was passed by Congress, Dr. Romer released a report projecting that unemployment would “average 10 percent” for the year. Today, joblessness is at 9.5 percent.
- Jobs ‘Created or Saved.’ Dr. Romer is proud to author reports like the one she and the vice president are releasing today touting jobs ‘created or saved’ by the ‘stimulus’, but when asked about this very topic in July 2009, she said, “It’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is, right, because you don’t know what the economy would have done without it.” The federal watchdog overseeing ‘stimulus’ spending has stated that these reports are “riddled with inaccuracies.”
- “Biggest Bang.” Dr. Romer raised eyebrows when she told lawmakers last fall that the ‘stimulus’ would have its greatest impact in “the second and third quarters of 2009” – a period that, by that point, had already passed. Asked four months later whether the “biggest bang” for the ‘stimulus’ was behind us, Dr. Romer said, “absolutely not.”
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