FAILED "stimulus" anniversary

by Bill Claydon

Today marks the second anniversary of the failed Obama (or maybe Pelosi?) “stimulus.” No sooner did Obama get nearly coronated after winning what was largely the equivalent of a national popularity or prom king election (complete with near expressionless zombies chanting “Yes we can”) then he started hawking a gargantuan “stimulus.”

Obama wore the hat of “salesman in chief” well while people were still virtually drunk on the hope and change nonsense after his near coronation. But as time went on, he simply became a less charming version of the fictional character Mr. Haney from the 1960s show Green Acres. In fact, looking at Mr. Haney’s Wikipedia entry, I found this quote to be so perfect in describing what Obama tries to sell us:

He often took a piece of junk and called it by some outlandish name, suggesting that it has some use that it clearly does not and that it’s in some way valuable.

We were told that unemployment would go above 8% if we didn’t pass the stimulus IMMEDIATELY! Of course unemployment is hovering around 10% and underemployment is hovering at 20%. But it was so important to pass this thing that nobody in Congress had enough time to fully digest it. In fact, when Obama campaigned, he said that bills would wait for five days until he signed them into law. He broke that promise in just about a month after his near coronation. And despite our nation being in a severe economic crisis, Obama took the liberty of ordering that his taxpayer funded personal private jet be flown to Colorado, dumping untold amounts of carbon into the environment, for an unnecessary signing ceremony. (Cue the kneejerk “What about Bush?” comment. Answer: Obama was supposed to be better than Bush since he campaigned that way against term limited Bush. Further, Bush did not lecture the American people about carbon and global warming/climate change/liberal term du jour. But if it makes you feel better, you can blame Bush for Obama wasting taxpayer money and spewing carbon for his unnecessary Colorado signing ceremony.)

I know some on the left will come up with vague and unprovable figures, saying “If we did not have the stimulus, it would have been worse.” Heck, why not just suggest something equally absurd: “If we did not have the stimulus, the moon would fall into the earth” or something. I mean really, if we want to do the chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling thing, let’s at least be creative with it. Speaking of creativity, HOW many jobs were “saved or created,” including all those short term census jobs that happened as a result of a Constitutionally mandated project every decade since 1790?

Despite the FAILED stimulus shackling future generations (the ones actually not aborted — likely at taxpayer expense that is) to debt to pay off Democrat political interests, it had some interesting side notes. First, party identity challenged FORMER US Senator from Pennsylvania, “Benedict” Arlen Specter (who flipped from D to R and then back to D at the end) voted for this boondoggle. As did the two RINOs from Maine. Without their help, the “Stimulus” never would have been an excuse for Obama’s expensive signing ceremony in Colorado. After criticism, “Benedict” Arlen flip flopped back to his original party and the party that basically represents his voting habits. He knew he couldn’t win a Republican primary after that. (He then was primaried out by another member of the Democrat party, which was perfect.) On the House side, the now shellacked Pelosi wielded her majority to ram this thing through.

But the drama surrounding the votes wasn’t even the most entertaining point. What was really fun were all the phantom congressional districts that supposedly got “stimulus” money. This after a multimillion dollar taxpayer funded project to construct a database to let taxpayers know where their future generations’ money was being wasted, um, I mean, spent. Districts like New Hampshire’s 00th or Arizona’s 84th supposedly received “stimulus” money and/or “saved or created” jobs. Hey, could someone tell me who won the 2010 congressional races in those and all the other phantom districts?

Then we had the millions of dollars of large and expensive signs built which announced that a routine paving project was paid for with “stimulus” (or rather, the lengthy outlandish name they called it) money. Hey why not spend it? It’s not like it was coming from the politicians personally….it’s debt on the shoulders of future generations. Waste, baby waste! I’m not sure if they thought this would garner political points for the 2010 elections, but ultimately it just created a lot of negative publicity.

After having just supported and voted for TARP, Obama turned right around and demanded another 700 billion from future Americans. Enough was enough with DC’s big spending ways and this was not the “hope and change” promised. So, while the tea was brewing with TARP, the whistle on the kettle blew when it came to the FAILED “stimulus.”

Make no mistake. The “stimulus” and ObamaCare were two huge factors in the gigantic shellacking Pelosi received and the reduction in Democrat Senate seats. Outside of solidly Democrat New York, many Democrat held governor seats flipped to Republican. Others in Congress saw the shellacking coming and suddenly remembered after all these years that they had a family and needed to spend time with them.

Had the “stimulus” actually worked, we’d see unemployment at or below 8% like Obama read from his teleprompter. The tea party may have dried up. People would not continue to be losing their homes as much. There wouldn’t be talk about extending unemployment indefinitely. There would be REAL hope. And let’s face it: Pelosi would still be Speaker and people like Andrew Cuomo would not have to at least talk tough. Chris Christie wouldn’t even get a political footnote as he would have been soundly defeated by Jon Corzine. Yes those things are fun to watch, but too bad our power hungry ruling class had to enslave future generations so much to get us there.

Happy anniversary, Obama/Pelosi FAILED “stimulus.”