Today in Washington, D.C. - Sept 17, 2010 - More Examples of Stimulus Waste and Failure Surface, Dems Have No Regrets

With the continued examples of stimulus waste and failures being revealed, I hope you are registered to vote and sharing information like the following with 5 to 10 other people. Some people even have established a circle of 50 to 100 people with whom they share information. November is Coming!

The Senate is in recess until 2 PM on Monday after doing its dirty deeds yesterday. Forty seven (47) Democrats voted against adding President Obama’s proposal to permanently extend the research and development tax credit to their small business lending bill. Also rejected was an attempt by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to extend the biodiesel tax credit.  Following those votes, the Senate passed, 61-38, the Small Business bill, H.R. 5297. To better understand the pitfalls and issues, check out Thuggery 101 Sam Sherraden of the Hill offers "key provisions of Senate and House small-business bills."

According to ABC News, the White House is again attempting sell its failed $814 billion stimulus bill as a success. But a much more indicative story of how the stimulus has performed comes out of Los Angeles today.

The Los Angeles Times reports, “Two Los Angeles departments have received $111 million in federal stimulus funds yet have created only 55 jobs so far, according to a pair of reports issued Thursday by City Controller Wendy Greuel.” And the International Business Times adds, “‘I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million,’ says Wendy Greuel, the city's controller, while releasing an audit report. ‘With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work,’ she added. According to the report, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works generated only 45.46 jobs (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours works) after receiving $70.65 million, while the target was 238 jobs. Similarly, the city’s department of transportation, armed with a $40.8 million fund, created only 9 jobs in place of an expected 26 jobs.”

So where has the stimulus money gone? The Wall Street Journal reports today, “More than $3.7 billion of stimulus contracts, grants and loans have gone to recipients in the District of Columbia and two adjacent congressional districts—Maryland's 8th District and Virginia's 8th District. That amounts to nearly $2,000 for every resident—nearly three times the national average, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of reports filed by recipients.”

But it appears the bulk of this money has actually gone to firms managing the extra bureaucracy created by the stimulus. According to the WSJ, “More than $2.2 billion of the stimulus money awarded to the Washington area has gone to private firms, many of which are helping federal agencies with the administrative work generated by the sprawling effort: deciding how to award funds, drawing up contracts and monitoring and auditing spending.”

As Kimberley Strassel notes in her column today, “By now, the $800 billion ‘stimulus’ was supposed to have the economy roaring back and unemployment well below 8%. The administration was supposed to be resting on its legislative laurels, the public showing growing appreciation for its agenda.” Of course, this hasn’t happened. Unemployment is at 9.6% and 3.3 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus bill was signed. And it seems that of the few jobs that were funded by stimulus money, most wound up being in and around Washington, with many simply existing to administer the rest of the stimulus.

Americans aren’t enamored with this state of affairs, as ABC points out. “The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 92 percent of Americans say the economy's in bad shape while a mere 24 percent believe it's improving. And for the first time, more people think President Obama has hurt the economy than helped it, 33 percent to 30 percent. In addition, the number of people who believe he's helped the economy has dropped by 9 percentage points since spring.”

Yet in spite of all of this, Democrats still apparently have no regrets. The Hill reports, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday she had no doubts that the economic measures undertaken in the House this term were best suited to aid the economy. . . . ‘No,’ Pelosi responded when asked if Democrats' ‘recipe was off’ for economic recovery.”   Pelosi and the White House may be pleased with the budget-busting stimulus bill’s dismal record of job creation, but Americans can see that Democrats’ economic policies have not lived up to their promises and are not the right solutions to put people back to work.

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