In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal has an excellent article today about the Administration’s arrogance when it comes to jobs numbers.
From the article:
The government agency charged with overseeing the economic-stimulus program says it has no plans to change its claim that the package directly created or saved 640,329.17 jobs through September, despite its own admission and statements from the White House that the number is not accurate…
…The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report last week saying that there were “significant issues to be addressed” in the accuracy of the recipients’ forms…
…The Wall Street Journal found hundreds of reports inflating the job total by at least 20,000 because recipients mistakenly counted college part-time work-study positions, employees who got small pay raises, indirect jobs recipients assumed to have been created as result of their spending and people working on decades-old government contracts as full-time jobs created or saved by the stimulus….
…”Unless we find significant errors causing public confusion, we are not planning further corrections,” Mr. Pound said Friday…
So, the GAO finds significant issues which need to be addressed and the Wall Street Journal finds at least 20,000 fake jobs but the agency charged with overseeing the “stimulus” is waiting to find significant errors causing public confusion?
Rasmussen Reports is out with a new survey showing that, by nearly a two-to-one margin, more Americans believe cutting the deficit is more important than health care reform.
According to the survey, 42% of Americans say cutting the deficit in half in the President’s first term is the most important issue facing this country compared to 24% who believe it’s health care reform. Other issues topping the list include alternative energy development and education reform which garnered 15% and 13% respectively.
While most Americans think cutting the deficit is the most important thing facing the country right now, 62% say it’s the one goal the President is least likely to achieve.
In addition, 68% believe Pelosi plan for health care “reform” will increase the deficit, not cut it, and half say that passing no reform at all is better than the plans currently working through Congress.
In case you missed it, the New York Times leads today with a story about the coming crisis with regard to the nation’s debt. From the article:
…Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed…
…With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.
In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
Click here to read the full article and text of the Landrieu language.
In case you missed it, Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel wrote this piece for today’s paper:
Help Wanted The Democratic Party seeks a wildly optimistic individual to oversee a national jobs-creation program.
Wanted: National Jobs Czar
Employer: The Democratic Party
Job Type: Crisis Management/Complex Mathematics/Mental Health Professional
Start Date: Now. Like, Right Now.
Description: The Democratic Party seeks a wildly optimistic individual to oversee a national jobs-creation program. Jobs can be real, or not, so long as the public thinks the party is “doing something.” The National Jobs Creator will have at his disposal Congress to pass new “jobs legislation” (aka The It-Is-Not-Another-Stimulus Act of 2009).
The NJC will oversee a dynamic team whose side responsibilities include selling this to the public and saving our behinds in next year’s election. This is a potential career status position.
The Heritage Foundation today released a memo detailing the negative impact of the Death Tax and the benefits of repealing it. From the memo:
The death tax is a drag on America’s family-owned businesses, destroys jobs, and lowers wages while raising little revenue. As such, Congress should repeal the estate tax once and for all to remove an unfair burden from the backs of American family-owned businesses and their workers…
Economic Benefits of Full Repeal
A recent study found that a full repeal of the death tax would create 1.5 million jobs. This is half the number of jobs President Obama claimed the $800 billion stimulus package would create–at one-fifth the price.
Additional benefits from full repeal of the estate tax include:
Increasing small business capital by over $1.6 trillion;
Increasing the probability of hiring by 8.6 percent;
Increasing payrolls by 2.6 percent;
Expanding investment by 3 percent; and
Slashing the current jobless rate by 0.9 percent.
The death tax also impedes economic growth because it stands opposed to the principles of virtue, thrift, and savings that made America the strongest nation on earth. For those Americans who think that their estates may one day pay federal death taxes, the death tax increases their incentive to consume their wealth today rather than invest and make more money in the future. Instead of putting their money in the hands of entrepreneurs or investing more in their own economic endeavors, Americans get the unmistakable message to consume it now.
Kill the Death Tax
It is time for Congress to kill the death tax once and for all. Doing so would lift a tremendous weight off the shoulders of America’s family-owned businesses, create jobs for out-of-work Americans, and help the ailing economy.
The AJC is reporting that UGA’s mascot, Uga VII, died today. Jack had the opportunity to meet him on the sidelines of this weekend’s victory against Auburn.
Jack participated in the “Holiday Mail for Heroes” today, a program sponsored by the American Red Cross that allows Americans to send Christmas cards to soliders and veterans both at home and abroad. If you’d like to learn more, click here.
Jack spoke on the House floor this evening and pointed out that, without a single vote from Congress, the Federal Reserve last year spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Now there’s a dangerous proposal in Congress that would give the Federal Reserve and the FDIC permanent bailout authority to keep bailing out firms without approval. This will endanger our fiscal policy, create an unfair competitive advantage for those firms dubbed “too big to fail” and will encourage risky behavior as financial firms realize “Uncle Sugar” is there to bail them out. It’s time to stop the bailouts.
ABC News just posted a story revealing a Government Accountability Office report which shows continued discrepencies with the White House’s “created or saved” jobs claims.
The report shows that:
59,386 jobs were claimed to have been “created or saved” by projects on which no “stimulus” money was spent
$965,000,000 was spent on 10,000 projects without creating a single job
As we reported yesterday, the White House’s $18 million website says they spent $6,217,770 in seven non-existent congressional districts to create only 1 job.
What passes for a joke on Capitol Hill these days is that Bernie Madoff, given his experience managing Ponzi schemes, should be put in charge of the federal budget. Nancy Pelosi & Co. seem to have taken it as a serious suggestion.
Any day now, the House is expected to vote on a $210 billion fiscal swindle that will prevent automatic cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. The entitlement’s price controls are scheduled to fall by 21.5% in January and another 2% every year after that under a formula known as the sustainable growth rate, and eliminating the SGR was the price the American Medical Association demanded in return for its endorsement of the House health-care bill that passed earlier this month.
“From what you know so far, which comes closest to your own view? 1. The economic stimulus package has already created a substantial number of new jobs in the U.S., OR 2. It will create a substantial number of new jobs but hasn’t done that yet, OR 3. It will not create a substantial number of new jobs.”
7% Created jobs already 46% Will create jobs eventually
42% Will never create jobs
5% Do not know
CBS News; conducted November 13-16, 2009; Survey of 1,167 Adults Nationwide
Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), pictured above with (from left) Congressman Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) and Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D-FL), makes good on a bet with Congresswoman Brown over the winner of the Georgia-Florida game. Congressman Kingston bet Claxton (Georgia) Fruit Cakes to Congresswoman Brown’s Florida oranges. While Congressman Crenshaw now represents northeast Florida in Congress, he attended the University of Georgia on a basketball scholarship.
