By Karl Rove
The stimulus isnt working as originally advertised.
So whats a president to do when the promises he made about his economic stimulus program fail to materialize? If youre Barack Obama you redefine your goals and act as if America wont remember what you said originally. Thats a neat trick if you can get away with it but Mr. Obama wont. His words are a matter of public record and he will be held to them.
When it came to the stimulus package the president and his administration promised in the words of National Economic Director Larry Summers Youll see the effects begin almost immediately. Now its clear that those promised jobs and growth havent materialized.
So Mr. Obama is attempting to lower expectations retroactively saying in an op-ed in Sundays Washington Post that his stimulus was from the start a two-year program. That is misleading. Mr. Obama never said if his stimulus were passed things might still get significantly worse in the following year.
In February Mr. Obama said this about the goals of his stimulus package: I think my initial measure of success is creating or saving four million jobs. He later explained the stimuluss $787 billion would go directly to . . . generating three to four million new jobs. And his Council of Economic Advisors issued an official analysis showing that the unemployment rate would top out in the third quarter of this year at just over 8.
That quarter began on July 1 and unemployment is now 9.5 up from 7.6 when Mr. Obama took office. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than there were on the day Mr. Obama was sworn in. The president says now that unemployment will exceed 10 this year and his advisers say it will remain high through much of next year.
Earlier this year Mr. Obama assured us that most of the stimulus money will go out the door immediately. But it hasnt. Only about 7.7 of the stimulus has been spent in the six months since its passage and more of it will be spent in the programs last eight years than in its first year. So now the president claims he said something different. We also knew that it would take some time for the money to get out the door Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio address on Saturday.
One problem with Mr. Obamas stimulus bill that is rarely talked about is that it will force a huge and likely permanent increase in discretionary domestic spending. That portion of federal spending was $393 billion in President George W. Bushs last budget. Democrats immediately raised it to $408 billion for this fiscal year and now face the question of whether to make the stimulus a one-time expenditure or a permanent spending increase.
Federal education spending is a good example. As part of the stimulus Mr. Obama nearly doubled education spending to $80 billion from $41 billion. If Congress adds that and other stimulus spending into the baseline for future budgets discretionary domestic spending could mushroom to $550 billion or $600 billion next year. If that happens Mr. Obama will have broken his pledge that the stimulus would be temporary spending.
As is Mr. Obamas habit he has answered his critics by creating straw-man arguments. In last weekends radio address he attacked detractors as those who felt that doing nothing was somehow an answer. But many of Mr. Obamas critics didnt feel that way. They offered -- and Mr. Obama almost completely ignored -- constructive ideas to jump-start the economy.
For example House Republicans offered an alternative recovery package of immediate tax cuts and safety-net measures that cost half as much as Mr. Obamas stimulus program. Republicans have also calculated that their plans would have created 50 more jobs than the stimulus. They reached that estimate by using the same job-growth econometric model that the presidents Council of Economic Advisors used for the stimulus.
While in Moscow recently Mr. Obama answered questions on whether his administration had misread the economy by saying theres nothing that we would have done differently. Let me suggest two things: He could have proposed pro-growth policies rather than ones that retard economic recovery with a massive increase in deficit spending. And he could fulfill his promise to speak to us honestly rather than selling his proposals with promises and goals he rapidly discards.
In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell wrote about words used in a consciously dishonest way. That is Orwell wrote the person who uses them has his own private definition but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Americans are right to wonder if their president is using his own private definitions for the words he uses to sell his policies.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
