This weekend three different White House advisers speaking on three different Sunday shows gave three different answers as to how many jobs President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus had been “created or saved.” This coming just two weeks after the White House issued a memo supposedly ending the administration’s use of the jobs “created or saved” phrase. And that memo was inspired by several dozen reports that many thousands of the jobs the Obama administration had claimed were “saved or created” by their stimulus were entirely fake.
So really it should come as no surprise that the American people have come to believe that the Obama stimulus has been a massive waste of resources. CNN reports:
Nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday morning also indicates that 63 percent of the public thinks that projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit, with 36 percent saying those projects will benefit the economy.
Twenty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say nearly all the money in the stimulus has been wasted, with 24 percent feeling that most money has been wasted and an additional 29 percent saying that about half has been wasted. Twenty-one percent say only a little has been wasted and 4 percent think that no stimulus dollars have been wasted.
When President Obama was selling his stimulus to the American people his White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report promising that if his plan became law, unemployment would never go higher than 8.2% and the U.S. economy would support 138.6 million jobs by December 2010. In reality, unemployment is still at 10% and President Obama is 7.7 million jobs short of his promise. Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl explains why:
Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.
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Yes, government spending can put under-utilized factories and individuals to work–but only by idling other resources in whatever part of the economy supplied the funds. If adding $1 billion would create 40,000 jobs in one depressed part of the economy, then losing $1 billion will cost roughly the same number of jobs in whatever part of the economy supplied Washington with the funds. It is a zero-sum transfer regardless of whether the unemployment rate is 5 percent or 50 percent.
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The government rarely receives good value for the dollars it spends. However, stimulus bills provide politicians with the political justification to grant tax dollars to favored constituencies. By increasing the budget deficit, large stimulus bills eventually contribute to higher interest rates while dropping even more debt on future generations.
NBC News reports:
As the Senate sprints to pass a health-care bill by Christmas, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that those believing President Obama’s health-reform plan is a good idea has sunk to its lowest level.
Just 32 percent say it’s a good idea, versus 47 percent who say it’s a bad idea.
In addition, for the first time in the survey, a plurality prefers the status quo to reform. By a 44-41 percent margin, respondents say it would be better to keep the current system than to pass Obama’s health plan.
By comparison, in September’s and October’s NBC/Journal polls, the American public preferred changing the system to the status quo, 45 to 39 percent.
The 15 point spread between the 47% against and 32% for, more than doubles the spread NBC News measured back in October when only 41% opposed Obamacare and 38% supported. And don’t forget today’s Washington Post poll showing 51% of adults against Obamacare and only 44% support it.
And why are the American people souring on Obamacare? The Washington Post reports that 66% of Americans believe Obamacare will increase the federal budget deficit, 53% believe it will cause their own health care to cost more, 55% believe it will increase the country’s health care costs overall, and 50% believe it will not improve their quality of care. These findings echo an earlier CNN poll which found that 61% of Americans opposed Obamacare, with 79% believing it would add to the deficit and 85% believing it would raise their taxes.