Chief WH Economic Advisor Admits $Trillion Stimulus Job Creation Plan is a Bust!

Yet, we're supposed to believe their promises for health care reform?

Readers may recall that the same White House bunch promising a "deficit neutral" health care plan promised that if we passed the $787 billion stimulus ($one trillion after debt cost) that we would save millions of American jobs. They even put out a chart which showed their projections state by state on the jobs they expected to be created.

Earlier this week, I posted a report from the House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member which shows that instead of creating millions of new jobs, we have lost an additional 2.7 million since the stimulus bill was rushed through congress.

A reasonable person might say: well, perhaps more jobs will be created later as the stimulus spending increases? That would conflict with the statement of Christina Romer, Chair of the WH Council of Economic Advisors. In prepared testimony she delivered before Congress on October 22, 2009 she dropped this bombshell:

"Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009.By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth."

So, we spent a trillion taxpayer dollars and exploded the deficit only to lose 2.7 million jobs? It gets worse. Romer concluded:

"We enter the fourth quarter of 2009 with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent and likely to remain severely elevated."

In the video posted at right you can hear the incredulity expressed by the panel of the Fox News program Special Report. No wonder the White House wants to silence Fox News!

Folks like yours truly warned as the stimulus bill was passed that it was nothing more than a Democrat vote buying scheme and would, as the Congressional Budget Office suggested, actually harm economic recovery. In January (here and here), House GOP leaders presented President Obama with alternative ideas focusing on small business job creation. They have repeated that call in October. President Obama, who claims to seek bipartisan solutions has rejected their proposals.

Obama Owns This Mess!

Obama got everything he asked for in the stimulus bill. He owns the growing unemployment problem. He still tries to blame Bush for the mess at every opportunity but those words ring hollow after months of promising that if we followed his plan, his way hope and change would arrive. Rather than spend his time trying to work with Republicans and include their alternatives in possible solutions he has attacked them with some of the most partisan and divisive language ever spoken by a U.S. president.

Peggy Noonan, who after a brief infatuation with hope and change realized her error, has this to say:

His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain.
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At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it's your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it's yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That's the American people telling him.