Morning Bell: Holding the President Accountable on His Stimulus

Conn Carroll / June 23, 2009

Yesterday, the White House released new rules for counting the number of jobs created by President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Governors, mayors, and contractors will be required to keep track of every full-time, full-year job funded by Obama’s stimulus, but they are not required to submit their data to the federal government until October of this year. White House budget office deputy director Rob Nabors told the AP: “If governors or mayors or contractors make up numbers, it’s not going to take long for that to come to light.” But what about Vice Presidents? If this data isn’t even going to be collected until October, then why was Vice President Joe Biden running around the country earlier this month claiming Obama’s stimulus “has already created 150,000 jobs around the country.” Talk about making stuff up.

The Obama administration’s newfound commitment to accuracy in stimulus job counting comes at the same time that Americans are rapidly losing faith in the effectiveness of his stimulus plan. The Washington Post released a new poll today showing that “barely half of Americans are now confident that President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus measure will boost the economy.” The Post continues: “What was once a clearly positive assessment of the program among independents (56 to 39 percent) is now an almost even split (50 to 47 percent).” The poll also identified some of the reasons more Americans are losing faith in the $787 billion deficit spending plan. Almost nine in ten Americans say they are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the size of the federal deficit, and independents now say they favor smaller government with fewer services to a larger government with more services by a 61% to 35% margin. That is compared to a 52% to 44% margin a year ago. (more…)