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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Stimulus and Unemployment

In January, two of the Administration’s top economic officials released a report regarding the job creating potential of the stimulus bill. On page four, they offer a graph detailing the nation’s unemployment picture with and without the bill.

Geoff at Innocent Bystanders has been tracking the actual monthly unemployment numbers in relation to this estimate. Unfortunately, though not entirely unexpectedly, by this measure the plan appears to be failing miserably.


As job losses continue to mount, President Obama's pledge to save or create 3.5 million new jobs becomes more difficult to live up to. Fox News reports:
To reach his 3.5 million-jobs goal, Obama needs at least 138.6 million people employed by next year, leaving him with a job deficit of nearly 6.2 million jobs, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

J.D. Foster, a senior fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, who performed the analysis, argues Obama's policies will only widen the gap.

"Unfortunately, the president's policies will more likely decrease employment than help to reach his target," he wrote in his analysis.

"Policies like higher tax rates on small businesses, sustained massive budget deficits, doubling the national debt (and the consequent upward pressure on interest rates) and the building threats of government meddling in companies are eroding the foundations of the economy today and for the future," he said.

5 comments:

  1. This President is not interested in solving problems as he says. He is interested in power and money and total destruction of our traditional civil society and financial leadership.

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  2. You people were pretty quiet as Bush and his cronies lied to get us into a war without end, repealed 30+ years of environmental protections (including completely gutting Superfund), spent money like it was going out of style (4 years with NOT ONE veto?!), "lost" millions of dollars (literally) that were inexplicably sent to Iraq, and allowed big business and Wall St to do whatever they wanted until we come to this point and NOW that someone is TRYING to do something about it all you can do is to cry and complain!? I guess if Republicans actually had some ideas of their own that didn't include spying on or squashing hard working Americans to their own gain they'd put them forward instead of moaning and crapping all over everyone else's.

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  3. Lisa, get a grip.

    Did Bush promote programs to quadruple the federal deficit?

    NO.

    Obama is tanking the economy and all you can do is whine about Bush. Of course that isn't a surprise since all Obama is capable of doing (other than tanking the economy) is whining about Bush as well.

    What's next? Are you going to blame your genital warts on Bush?

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  4. Hey Lisa S, pay no attention to these clowns, they're just a cloud of gas that hopefully will dissipate along with the rest of the RNC and the utterly failed last three decades of reagononics.

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  5. These numbers do not appear to include the new grads, underemployed or unemployed for long periods of time off the statistical chart, so how reliable is the data?

    Stop finger pointing and blaming and start looking for solutions and we will all do well in the future.

    ReplyDelete