The First Stimulus Has Been A Total Disaster So Naturally Democrats Plan To Waste Even More Borrowed Money On More Useless Stimulus

Hey, I know, the first “stimulus” isn’t working, so let’s spend more money we don’t have on a second “stimulus”. Nevermind that we haven’t even spent one third of the first trillion dollar “stimulus” yet.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

/Albert Einstein

STIMULUS WATCH: Unemployment Unchanged by Projects

A federal spending surge of more than $20 billion for roads and bridges in President Barack Obama’s first stimulus has had no effect on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”

An Associated Press analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn’t matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.

With the nation’s unemployment rate at 10 percent and expected to rise, Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress including billions of additional dollars for roads and bridges — projects the president says are “at the heart of our effort to accelerate job growth.”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood defended the administration’s recovery program Monday, writing on his blog that “DOT-administered stimulus spending is the only thing propping up the transportation construction industry.”

Road spending would total nearly $28 billion of the Jobs for Main Street Act, a $75 billion second stimulus to help lower the unemployment rate and improve the dismal job market for construction workers. The Senate is expected to consider the House-approved bill this month.

But AP’s analysis, which was reviewed by independent economists at five universities, showed the strategy of pumping transportation money into counties hasn’t affected local unemployment rates so far.

“There seems to me to be very little evidence that it’s making a difference,” said Todd Steen, an economics professor at Hope College in Michigan who reviewed the AP analysis.

And there’s concern about relying on transportation spending a second time.

“My bottom line is, I’d be skeptical about putting too much more money into a second stimulus until we’ve seen broader effects from the first stimulus,” said Aaron Jackson, a Bentley University economist who also reviewed AP’s analysis.

And what if your “stimulus” isn’t creating even a fraction of the jobs you promised? Well, as they say, if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bull[expletive deleted]!

White House Inflates Stimulus Job Creation With Accounting Gimmicks

The Obama administration is changing the way it counts jobs created or saved by stimulus spending in a way that will make the programs look far more successful.

Under the old rules, only jobs that were actually newly created or not lost because of stimulus money were counted. Now the administration plans to count all jobs for projects funded by stimulus money—even if that job already existed and the person was never in danger of losing the job.

The changes were made in a little noticed memo sent to federal agencies by OMB director Peter Orszag, according to a new report from ProPublica.

See also:
More Stimulus? Analysis Finds Funds for Roads, Bridges Has Had No Impact
Stimulus? There’s No Stimulus Here
Where Are The Stimulus Jobs?
U.S. road projects don’t help unemployment
Study: Road projects don’t help unemployment
No Unemployment Impact from Road and Bridge Spending
White House Changes Stimulus Jobs Count
White House changes how stimulus jobs are counted
Farewell “Saved or Created”: Obama Administration Changes the Counting of Stimulus Jobs
Counting jobs
White House panics on jobs
SUBJECT: Updated Guidance on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – Data Quality, Non-Reporting Recipients, and Reporting of Job Estimates

/Democrat’s “stimulus”, throwing money in the money hole, what’s the difference?

Spending Like A Drunken Sailor On Crack

So, Obama keeps saying that he’s going to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Oh really?

Deficit Projected To Swell Beyond Earlier Estimates

President Obama’s ambitious plans to cut middle-class taxes, overhaul health care and expand access to college would require massive borrowing over the next decade, leaving the nation mired far deeper in debt than the White House previously estimated, congressional budget analysts said yesterday.

In the first independent analysis of Obama’s budget proposal, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obama’s policies would cause government spending to swell above historic levels even after costly programs to ease the recession and stabilize the nation’s financial system have ended.

Tax collections, meanwhile, would lag well behind spending, producing huge annual budget deficits that would force the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade — $2.3 trillion more than the president predicted when he unveiled his budget request just one month ago.

Although Obama would come close to meeting his goal of cutting in half the deficit he inherited by the end of his first term, the CBO predicts that deficits under his policies would exceed 4 percent of the overall economy over the next 10 years, a level White House budget director Peter R. Orszag yesterday acknowledged would “not be sustainable.”

The result, according to the CBO, would be an ever-expanding national debt that would exceed 82 percent of the overall economy by 2019 — double last year’s level — and threaten the nation’s financial stability.

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

Projected Deficit

In the first independent analysis, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Obama’s budget would rack up massive deficits even after the economy recovers, forcing the nation to borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade.

Now, does that look like Obama is going to cut the deficit in half or like he’s planning to spend like a drunken sailor on crack with someone else’s stolen American Express Gold card?

See also:
A New Era of Responsibility
Renewing America’s Promise
Obama Seeks Congressional Support for $3.55 Trillion Budget
Obama budget projected at $9.3 trillion in next 10 years
CBO: U.S. budget deficit to hit 1.8 trillion dollars this year
Deficit Projected To Swell Beyond Earlier Estimates
Great Obama bankruptcy?
Obama plan may ‘bankrupt’ US
Federal Budget Spending, National Debt, Deficit
U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK
Maxing Out the National Debt Clock

/how long before China and the rest of the world just say no and stop funding our insane deficit spending addiction?

War By Euphemism

I [expletive deleted] you not.

‘Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase “global war on terror,” a signature rhetorical legacy of its predecessor.

In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department’s office of security review noted that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’ ”

The memo said the direction came from the Office of Management and Budget, the executive-branch agency that reviews the public testimony of administration officials before it is delivered.

Not so, said Kenneth Baer, an OMB spokesman.

“There was no memo, no guidance,” Baer said yesterday. “This is the opinion of a career civil servant.”

Coincidentally or not, senior administration officials had been publicly using the phrase “overseas contingency operations” in a war context for roughly a month before the e-mail was sent.

Peter Orszag, the OMB director, turned to it Feb. 26 when discussing Obama’s budget proposal at a news conference: “The budget shows the combined cost of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and any other overseas contingency operations that may be necessary.”

And in congressional testimony last week, Craig W. Duehring, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower, said, “Key battlefield monetary incentives has allowed the Air Force to meet the demands of overseas contingency operations even as requirements continue to grow.”

Monday’s Pentagon e-mail was prompted by congressional testimony that Lt. Gen. John W. Bergman, head of the Marine Forces Reserve, intends to give today. The memo advised Pentagon personnel to “please pass this onto your speechwriters and try to catch this change before statements make it to OMB.”

See also:
The war on terror, RIP
Obama Renames the War on Terror
The ‘War on Terror’ is Over! Well, Sorta…
It’s not a War On Terror, it’s an “Overseas Contingency Operation”
Overseas Contingency Operation Is The New Global War on Terror
Children In Charge

What a novel war strategy, winning by redefining the conflict and recasting it as something benign. WTF?

/henceforth, al Qaeda and the Taliban shall be known as overly playful Jihad kittens