By U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady
Ranking House Republican Joint Economic Committee
At the six month anniversary of President Obamas signature achievement" - the $787 billion stimulus measure - its important to separate economic fact from fiction.
While convincing Democratic lawmakers to pass the massive spending bill without reading it the White House promised the stimulus would provide an immediate jolt" to the U.S. economy create millions of new jobs and keep unemployment under 8 percent.
None of those promises have materialized.
If the stimulus is working so well where are all the jobs? Two million more American jobs have been lost the economy continues to contract and the unemployment rate is at 9.4 percent and likely headed higher. The government reported recently that extended mass layoffs are at a record high.
The fact is the stimulus is too slow not focused on jobs and wasteful.
Only ten percent of the stimulus money has hit the U.S. economy. To put it in Texas terms if the American economy is the length of a football field the stimulus spending so far is equal to the length of your two shoes. No one - at least with a straight face - can credibly claim it is driving an economic recovery. I didnt vote for this then and I believe Congressional Leaders and the White House should admit its not working.
Only half of the stimulus spending will make its way through federal and state bureaucracy by early 2011 - long after the economy really needs it and just as critics correctly predicted.
Very little of this governments spending has created new jobs. The whopping $1.10 a day tax cut" hasnt spurred any consumer spending because most people didnt even notice it. Funding for roads and infrastructure is roughly 5 percent of the overall stimulus spending. Its appalling to me that more stimulus dollars will be wasted on things like buying new public art than spent helping small businesses survive this recession.
So far the stimulus has only served as a bailout to state governments so Democratic and Republican governors alike can claim balanced budgets.
And unfortunately as predicted far too much of the spending has been wasteful.
While difficult for an average taxpayer - or even a member of Congress - to track the spending each day the media reports on some outrageous boondoggle: a $3 million turtle crossing in Florida $50000 for a hand puppet project through the National Endowment for the Arts new office furniture for federal executives. An even more blatant example of the misuse of money occurred in Union New York. The city was given $600000 for a homeless program that they never requested. The city doesnt have homeless issues nor a homeless program. When city leaders protested the federal government told them to get creative."
With Americas crushing federal deficits worrying investors and inviting embarrassing lectures from China we should all be asking ourselves is this how we want our tax dollars spent?
Borrowing more than a trillion dollars to pay for all this will eventually put a drag on Americas recovery along with increased energy prices from the cap-and-trade scheme and major tax increases on professionals and small businesses included in the health care reform bill.
Rather than send Vice President Joe Biden out on the stump making wild claims about the stimulus to an increasingly skeptical America its time to repeal the unspent portion of this boondoggle and start showing the world we are serious about getting our financial house in order.
