As word comes out that unemployment in the United States is even higher than Barack Obama’s worst case estimates, Obama is stepping up the public relations campaign.

President Barack Obama said on Monday he expected to create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days by expediting 10 major projects funded by a huge stimulus package that Congress passed in February.

Sorry folks, the more Obama tries to create or save jobs, it seems the more people lose their jobs. You know, I am a locally elected official in Macon, Georgia — I serve on City Council. And we have been dealing with stimulus funds already.

Most of the funds we have handled have focused on funding bureaucrats. Just last week in City Council, we were asked to ram through a $120,000.00 spending bill. It has to be done quickly and spent within 100 days on a “shovel ready project.” A lot of worthy projects in town got axed, because of the time limits. And most of the money will just go to the bureaucracy.

Here is an email from a friend in the private sector dealing with stimulus funds. He is having, in the private sector, the exact same experience I am having in government:

I am an environmental engineer by trade. As you know, much of the ARRA/stimulus money that is being proposed by the administration is being “pumped” into infrastructure projects. I deal specifically with municipal infrastructure every day and have clients across the state that are currently competing for this money. I can’t speak for all infrastructure, but I can speak in great detail on water and sewer specific projects.

Not one penny has been spent on construction projects in the state. The only people kept busy by this program so far have been the bureaucrats. The regulators (EPD/EPA and the funding agencies (GEFA, USDA- both state and federal) are the main folks that are benefiting from this money so far. There is so much red tape to actually get the money through to the end user that everything is stuck with the paper pushers. I have got to laugh when we hear how this money is impacting the economy. From a state standpoint, we have only helped to keep state agencies from cutting back staff… wow, what a great policy…

Exactly. This is exactly how Obama’s stimulus is working in the real world. And that is exactly why unemployment projections are so radically worse than what Obama projected.