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.
The markets have also been casting a vote of no confidence in Obama’s economic policies. Bond market “vigilantes” – those major institutional buyers of government debt impervious to soaring rhetoric and political promises – have reawakened and want to see concrete steps toward getting the $2 trillion deficit under control. The effect of the projected massive government borrowing, however, is to drive interest rates as much as a full percentage point higher yet. This will mean higher interest rates for consumer loans, mortgage loans, business loans, etc. Instead of a 6.5 percent mortgage rate, home buyers will face a 7.5 percent rate. The debt-based Obama economic stimulus plan is about to become a major drag on the recovery.
And there is no end in sight to the federal government’s profligate spending. The two leading health care reform bills that have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) weighed in at $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion. And on top of adding one of the most expensive new entitlements in American history, Congressional Democrats are planning to increase discretionary spending by another 8% this summer.
When selling their economic stimulus to the nation, the Obama administration set a clear benchmark of 138.6 million jobs in the U.S. economy by the end of 2010. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy currently employs 132.2 million people. The President has 6.4 million jobs to go.
Quick Hits:
- Today is your last day to go to StopEPA.com and voice your opposition to the EPA’s new global warming rules, which will hurt ordinary Americans and constrain the economy. So far 20,000 friends of Heritage have had their voices heard. Have you?
- According to a spate of recent polls, eroding confidence in President Obama’s handling of the economy and ability to control spending has caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since he took office.
- Democratic and Republican governors are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid, worrying that the billions in new liabilities will only further bankrupt their states.
- Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) is using the threat of a lawsuit to silence and intimidate critics and has changed their name to “Community Organizations International.”
- Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) filed a motion with the Rules Committee that will bring the Waxman-Markey energy tax to the House floor by the end of this week.
