Happy first birthday American Recovery and Reinvestment Act! Don’t celebrate just yet because you didn’t have a great year:
The Obama Administration has released this job losses chart and points out that GDP has increased to make the case that the stimulus has been effective. Less job loss and higher growth are obviously causes for celebration. However, there’s very little chance that the stimulus was responsible, especially given how little of it was actually spent during this recovery period. To be fair, let’s take a look at all of the stimulus’ marks before rushing to judgment.
TIMELINESS. Lawmakers promised the stimulus would have a very quick impact on the economy. In an interview six days before the stimulus was signed, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said, “If we pass this package by Friday afternoon, I’m convinced that by Friday next week, you’ll begin to see some positive stuff coming out of it…”
Grade: F
By the White House’s own measurements only 35 percent ($272.2 billion) of the stimulus funds have been paid out one year later (only 22.7 percent was paid out in 2009).
UNEMPLOYMENT. Five days before the stimulus was signed, Director of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer said the President’s goal was to create a bill that would create 3 to 4 million jobs and that unemployment would not rise above 8 percent with the stimulus. Two days after Romer, White House senior advisor David Axelrod said, “[W]ithout it that’s where we were looking — double-digit unemployment…” The jobless rate was 8.2 percent at the time.
Grade: D-
Since the bill was signed last February, the U.S. has lost 4 million jobs. And the unemployment rate hit 10.1 percent last October (it dropped to 9.7 percent in January). The White House recently admitted the unemployment rate will be nearly 10 percent for the rest of this year. The Administration has even stopped using the phrase “created or saved” before the word “jobs” because of how indefensible it has become.
Furthermore, the White House released a paper last year outlining the number of jobs that would be created or saved in each state. Since then, only two states have actually added jobs. To see the current statistics on job creation in your state, click here.
TRANSPARENCY: With a package that ranked as one of the all-time largest budget items, Americans were promised the spending would be “transparent and accountable.” The administration even built a slick website to help track the funds.
Grade: C-
Despite the website Recovery.gov (which is currently being redesigned at a cost of $18 million, of course, of stimulus money), about $6.4 billion was paid to Congressional districts that don’t exist, or “phantom districts,” according to Watchdog.org.
PREVENTING WASTE. At the stimulus’ signing ceremony President Obama said, “With a recovery package of this size comes a responsibility to assure every taxpayer that we are being careful with the money they work so hard to earn.” So he put Vice President Biden in charge of combating stimulus waste.
Grade: F
Among the waste, the National Institutes for Health received 8 billion stimulus dollars for research inluding $783,000 to study the relationship between malt liquor and marijuana and $183,000 to collect ticks. The NIH’s acting deputy director for extramural research admitted that “the agency did not choose projects based on the jobs they would create.”
We’re also giving an “F” for fairness here since funds seem to have been given out acording to partisan interests over economic need. Districts represented by Democrats have received twice the number of stimulus dollars that districts represented by Republicans have received.
The good news is, Stimulus, you won’t need a magician for your birthday party because apparently you ARE magic.
