Without four years of Jimmy Carter, we would never have had Ronald Reagan.

Ask yourself, why do the claims regarding the volume of jobs this will create keep changing? Because they are not true.

In the early 1980’s there was unemployment of about 10.8%. I missed the spending of $825 billion that created jobs and brought unemployment down during that era.

And it could also represent a return to thinking about what kind of policies would really stimulate the economy over the long term.

That’s the kind of thinking the Republican Party needs to advance: policies that will grow America’s industries and businesses based on sound economic principles, not government throwaways.

The economy will probably show signs of recovery inspite of the stimulus, therefore “failure” is probably not the best measuring stick. What it will do, if properly watchdogged, is expose the fact that this was nothing more thab a big boondoggle for the Democratic constituencies. Worse yet, it will hinder the rate of longterm growth given the large overhang of debt and future obligations.

The public heard the President say this bill will stimulate the economy yet most of the money is spent on government programs (medicaid, unemployment, COBRA extensions, etc) which will not effect hiring or prevent more layoffs.

A stimulus bill would bypass the government and encourage business investment (reduce taxes, eliminate regulations, tax breaks for business construction…)

Obama has to understand this, he must feel he can spin the story to read ‘things would have been much worse without this bill’. I doubt he will be able to get away with this since there will be so many excessively expensive and crooked projects that Congress just gorged themselves on. The public”s patience will wear thin before long.

The other, scarier scenario is the the administration doesn’t have a clue and is randomly enacting legislation hoping that something will stick. Even some of my democrat and very liberal hedge fund friends are beginning to think this is the case.

Where do I sign up??? Us white,male ,construction workers won’t have anything to do anyways. I’m even considering joining ACORN. HEH

I was looking for a post for same ideas. Looks like House republicans are reading my mind.

I think the stimulus watch should be more aggressive…

1>How about if we track number of days since Stimulus was passed last week. And make it a running commentary. For example it has been 6 days and nothing has been stimulated. In fact market is tanking. As another example details on how much is economy shrinking.
2>How many projects have been started(remember it was an emergency that could lead to catastrophe) since the Emergency Stimulus package was approved by house and senate Democrats? Where are those shovel ready Projects? How many real jobs are being “created” by those Projects.
3>How are jobless numbers looking on a chart on a weekly basis?
4>How many companies from “Obama’s Economic Advisory Board” are going to benefit from this stimulus package? How much money these companies donate to democrat politicians/activist groups? How many of these companies have a salary cap of 500,000 USD?
5>How much money is being made by “Corporate America” versus common worker from this stimulus.
6>How much money is going to Activist Groups? What percentage of that money is creating “jobs”?

I’ll be adding this to my bookmarks in addition to Obama’s broken promises link:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

I want to see affluent suburban home owners with BMWs in the drive and status dinner party kitchens getting cameras shoved in their face (I’m all for those things on one’s own dime), asking them why they’re going to Vegas for the weekend when the working stiff on the other side of the tracks working all weekend is chipping in the their mortgage.

It can be an entire TV series.