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PrintFebruary 19, 2010
Party like its 1999! Are you Stimulated yet?
The first anniversary of Obama's $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is something worth celebrating, as if it were the hey-days of 1999, says... Obama!
This is another sign that we're moving in the right direction, a sign we're on the path to economic recovery.
At least he's consistent - he's been touting the impact of his Stimulus Bill since last fall. Then straight away he utters this cognitive dissonance - "It doesn't yet feel like much of a recovery." Oooh, my head hurts.
Notice the change from what was commonly referred to as a "Stimulus Bill" to the more technical "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." The Stimulus Bill was intended to save companies and provide jobs. The revisionist take is the plan "worked" by way of tax cuts, helping state governments, extending social services and benefits and spending wads of cash in education and infrastructure.
So, where are the jobs? As Market Watch noted -
Most of the extra jobs lost -- numbering a projected 824,000 -- came in the first quarter of 2009, adding to the 2.07 million that have already been reported, the government has forecast.
When he was sounding off about "heading in the right direction" last fall the unemployment rate was over 10%. When Obama took office the rate was 7.6%. A year later the $787 billion bill has stimulated unemployment - 9.7% as of January. This isn't football, it supposed to be golf. Lower is better. At the least the "stimulus" surely hasn't been the cause of any hiring frenzies.
President Obama channels his best FDR when he crows, "One year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility." He even needles the Stimulus Bill opponents by noting, "They were all kind of squirming in their seats," at his State of the Union address last month. That's an interesting observation: I suspect they were biting their tongues to keep from going all Joe Wilson on him on national television.
"Stimulus" huh? Like Inigo Montoya said to Vizzini in The Princess Bride - "You keep using that word. I do'nah think that word means what you think it means."
