Barack O'Flanagan's Top Ten Stimulus Fables

"Hey, I've got an idea! Let's borrow $787 billion from the Chinese... and spend it on a Stimulus package! We'll claim it will 'save or create' millions of new jobs! Wait, what's that you say? We did that? Seriously? Oh. Well, let's organize a 'jobs summit' and figure out how to do it all over again without any retrospective examination of how the first one failed! It'll be awesome!"

Dear America, brace yourselves. Prepare for a new litany of lies to rival the ten biggest fabrications of the first Stimulus disaster.

1. UNEMPLOYMENT "AT EIGHT PERCENT OR BELOW"

CLAIM: “Obama's top economic advisers claimed unemployment would remain at eight percent or below through this year with passage of an economic stimulus package (Associated Press, 6/14/09).
FAIL: The nation’s unemployment rate now stands at over 10% with 17% underemployment.

2. IMPACT FELT "IMMEDIATELY"

CLAIM: “Q: If the president gets his way and gets this package approved, he signs it into law, how soon before -- the American public starts to feel results, the creation of jobs?  NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR LAWRENCE SUMMERS: You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately.” (CNN, 2/9/09)
FAIL: Oh, we felt it immediately, alright. Right in the kiester, so to speak. The U.S. economy has lost more than three million jobs since the trillion-dollar 'stimulus' was signed.

3. "90 PERCENT ... PRIVATE SECTOR"

CLAIM: "More than 90 percent of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector." – President Obama (News conference, 2/9/09)
FAIL: "...well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector" (The New York Times, 11/4/09). But, after all, isn't that what Democrats do best? Grow government and diminish the individual?

4. "NO EARMARKS OR PET PROJECTS"

CLAIM: “There will be no earmarks or pet projects in this bill.” – Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Floor statement, 2/13/09)
FAIL: The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has produced countless examples of wasteful government spending, including repairs to a bridge that reportedly carries about 260 cars per day, many to a place called Rusty’s Backwater Saloon in Wisconsin, and in North Carolina, where ‘stimulus’ funds were reportedly used by one town to hire a new worker whose job is to apply for more ‘stimulus’ funds from Washington. Sounds efficient!

5. "A VERY FISCALLY SOUND PACKAGE"

CLAIM: “We must make sure the public understands this is a very fiscally sound package.” – Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Talk Radio News Service, 3/10/09)
FAIL: With the help of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus,’ the Obama Administration spent more in its first 100 days than all previous presidents have combined.  The national debt has topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.  The federal government is now operating on a budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten. Care to guess what happens to the economy when all of those debts come due -- and Social Security and Medicare collapse? Ah, but that's the genius of the Democrats: it's all intentional!

6. "A LOT MORE JOBS CREATED"

CLAIM: “The second hundred days you’re going to see a lot more jobs created.” – Vice President Joe Biden (ABC’s This Week, 7/5/09)
FAIL: The U.S. economy lost roughly 930,000 jobs in June, July, and August.  The good news: it was during this period that the President proclaimed he could “see a light at the end of the tunnel." The bad news: the light at the end of the tunnel is the express to Newark.

7. "A LOT MORE AMMUNITION LEFT"

CLAIM: “There is a lot more ammunition left in the stimulus package.” – Jared Bernstein, the Vice President's chief economist(CNNMoney.com, 10/30/09)
FAIL: “The government’s economic stimulus spending has already had its biggest impact and probably won’t contribute to significant growth next year, a top White House adviser said Thursday.” (Associated Press, 10/22/09). Not to worry, though, Joe Biden says "a lot" of jobs are on the way.

8. MORE WORK, NOT MORE JOBS

CLAIM: “I think we got the Recovery Act right. … It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” – National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers (The Washington Post, 11/8/09)
FAIL: The Obama Administration’s attempt to suddenly make job creation seem like a lesser goal of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ flies in the face of numerous public statements made in the days before the bill was passed, including the President’s statement that creating jobs was his "bottom-line number one."

9. RAISES SAVE JOBS

CLAIM: “If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job.” – Department of Health and Human Services spokesman (Associated Press, 11/4/09)
FAIL: This is one of the problems of having economic illiterates run the country. None has ever held a significant private-sector job, ever. And this is one of several attempts by the Obama Administration to define a job “saved or created” by the ‘stimulus.’ In this particular case, the AP found “more than 9,300 existing employees... who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.”  In a newly released report, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package." I know! Let's stick with 'Slow' Joe Biden's estimate of 'lots'.

10. "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN WASTEFUL SPENDING"

CLAIM: “You haven’t seen wasteful spending. No one has said we spent $2 million on things that didn’t exist.” – Vice President Joe Biden (The Daily Show, 11/17/09)
FAIL: Good thing he said that on The Daily Show, so everyone knew he was cracking wise. “Stimulus jobs reported in non-existent congressional districts. … Of all the problems found in the latest round of stimulus reporting, add another one: congressional districts that don’t exist.  ABC News reported yesterday that White House officials have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/18/09)  “The reports on jobs created or saved by the $787 billion economic stimulus package are ‘riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions,’ the federal watchdog overseeing the spending acknowledged Thursday.” (USA TODAY, 11/19/09)

Everyone knows what works. You start by slashing the size of government and decreasing taxes across the board -- on companies, capital gains and private sector workers. You spur the real economy.

Now, everyone knows what works, except for the blinkered, hard Left Democrats who now control the levers of power. They are driven by a Marxist ideology and the vision of a Utopian world government.

But perhaps Socialism will work this time! After all, Obama's Presidency is historic!