The Big Stimulus Package Lie!

Over and over, you will hear from Democrats that the Stimulus has worked because, before it, we were losing over 700,000 jobs per month. Superficially, this is true.

Simply looking at the Bureau Of Labor and Statistics own tracking chart of the monthly job gains and losses over the last two years, one could easily, and falsely, come to that same conclusion:

First off, the chart clearly shows that job losses peaked in January of 2009 at a level of just under 800,000 additional unemployed. Then, following Obama taking Office and the passage of the Stimulus Package, the losses began to decline; just as the left keeps touting. In fact, by August, the job losses had been slashed by nearly 80% to a level that was a little over 200,000 newly unemployed for that month.

But was the abatement of job losses really due to the Stimulus? Not, hardly!

The left seems to conveniently forget that the first Stimulus moneys didn't even start to going out the door until August of 2009; and, for many government agencies, even later than that (Click here to See a Typical Story: August a Busy Month for DHS Stimulus Spending). Much of the delay in awarding contracts for job creation was due to the slow Washington D.C. bureaucracy wasting months trying to figure out what to do and what the rules would be. The joke at the time was that all those presumably shovel-ready jobs weren't quite ready for prime time. In addition, It took weeks to setup up procedures for the approval and distribution of funding for any projects under the Package. But, by the time the initial projects were finally approved, this nation's job losses had "naturally" slowed on their own as our economy was busily trying to heal itself without any stimulus moneys.

Then, too, in early 2010, the job's picture moved from negative to positive. But, this, too, wasn't due to the Stimulus. Instead, it was primarily due to the hiring of temporary census workers. Now, in this latest report for June -- the first report since the hiring of the census takers was over -- we are again seeing losses, and those losses will only grow larger as the exacerbating effect of the census layoffs takes hold. With that in mind, most economists think that the unemployment rate will again go above 10%.

The lies associated with the Stimulus Package's ability to create jobs "and" the gullibility of the American public to believe those lies is amazing to me. What's worse, we have a group of noted economists in this country who are touting the benefits of the Stimulus but, in doing so, completely ignore the real facts surrounding the actual payouts of stimulus money. This is a simple denial by a group of supposed experts who don't want to admit that their Keynesian/demand-side economic theory is all wet in any practical application. Then, too, their personal politics might be clouding their opinions.

Surely, if the Stimulus Package was truly successful, we'd be basking in job growth and we wouldn't be hearing the excuse that the Stimulus is working "but" it needs to be even bigger. Let's not forget that, originally, long before Obama got into office, his team of economic gurus thought that $120 billion would be adequate to kick start the economy (Click here to See Story: Obama unveils $120 billion stimulus plan). Later, once elected and in office, that number soared to $787 billion. Now, some of those same people who originally thought the $120 billion would be fine, seem to think another trillion dollars is needed to get the economy going again. What, then, after that second trillion dollars doesn't work? $3 trillion? $4 trillion? Just how much of our money are these people willing to piss away to keep justifying a flawed economic theory?

The trouble with lying is that you have to keep lying in order to cover up the truth that you were attempting to hide with the first lie. Generally speaking, numbers don't lie when they're kept in their proper context. However, all too often, people are willing to pluck numbers out of that context and lie about them in order to advance their own personal agendas and/or to cover up or hide their original lie. And, that, my friends, is where Obama and the Democrats are today regarding the impact of the Stimulus Program!