The White House lies, employment dies, Biden tries to revise
At the beginning of this year, President Obama urged a quick passage of the $787 billion stimulus bill, because he said it was necessary to keep unemployment under 8 percent. Congress passed it, the President signed it, and today unemployment is at 9.7 % ― which is a higher rate than the White House projected would happen if Congress didn't pass the stimulus bill.
Now, if I had just made a $787 billion error, I'd apologize, move on and seriously reconsider my economic beliefs. This White House, though, has a slightly different strategy ― lie BIG.
So with his boss out of town, Mr. Biden stepped up Thursday to deliver a speech heavy with superlatives about the administration's economic stimulus plan. "Today there's a growing consensus: The Recovery Act [the $787 billion stimulus bill] is, in fact, working."Vice-President Biden and the White House are trying to change the standards for success, because they failed to fulfill their original promise ― low unemployment in the short term. And unfortunately, with its 13 percent unemployment rate, Nevada is feeling the effects of this broken promise more acutely than other states.
Declaring that 95 percent of all "working families" have received tax relief (check your mailbox), the vice president also noted that more than 54 million seniors and veterans "received a one-time check of $250." Mr. Biden also asserted that the program "saved or created 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days," and reiterated the administration's pledge to save or create another 600,000 in the second hundred days.
But that's where facts and fiction, like two Amtrak trains on the same track, collided. On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to announce another 200,000 jobs lost in August. Unemployment is expected to surge to 9.6 percent for August, according to Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business, who predicts the rate will top 10 percent by year's end.
Since Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden took office, the economy has shed 3 million jobs. "The recession has wiped out all the jobs created in the private sector over the last decade," Mr. Morici wrote. And while the stimulus package is expected to add about 3 million jobs by the end of 2011, "most of those jobs will be temporary and 3 million will not be enough to replace the more than 7 million that will be lost before the recession ends."
But Mr. Biden pooh-poohed such negativity, saying the recovery program is just getting under way.
"If you look at the Recovery Act as a two-year marathon, we're at the nine-mile mark. We're just approaching the nine-mile mark. Two hundred days in, the Recovery Act is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected," he said.
Oh, and Mr. Vice-President, if the Recovery Act is a two-year marathon, why did we have to pass the bill so quickly that no one ― NO one ― had time to read it?
The White House either doesn't understand or doesn't care about their policies' effects on the economy. And they want to run health care and cap-and-trade? Sorry, but the American people won't get fooled again.
The Obama administration should learn something about basic economics from cartoonist Michael Ramirez.
(h/t The Other McCain)
