President Obama, February 24, 2009, justifying his “stimulus” plan to a joint session of Congress:

I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.

That is why I have asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort - because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my Cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive Inspector General to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.

How’s that working out? So badly, now, that even David Obey, the liberal Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is looking to lay the blame on the Administration before it lands on him. A lot of observers have been assuming all along that with the Democrats currently headed in the direction of a very bad midterm election in 2010, Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, would sooner or later try to triangulate the Congressional Democrats, moving towards the center to let them take the fall for the failures of big-spending, big-taxing, big-regulating, big-bailouts, big-favor-giving liberalism. But maybe at some point, they will triangulate him first.

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Somewhere in these 57 states, there exist Congressional Districts between sight and sound, in which Barack Obama is “creating jobs” that do not exist for constituents of Congresspersons who do not exist either, reports Jonathan Karl of ABC News:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

Read the whole thing (did you know the Northern Mariana Islands had 99 Congressional Districts? Neither did I.) (Background here)

I can’t wait for these guys to run the Census, can you?

The Washington Examiner spots the pattern from multiple news reports:

More than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were “created or saved” by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary, according to reports compiled from eleven major newspapers and the Associated Press.

Based only on our analysis of stimulus media coverage in the last two weeks, The Examiner has created this interactive map to document exaggerated stimulus claims. The map, which will be updated as new revelations appear, currently reflects an exaggeration by the Obama administration of about 75,000 jobs, out of the 640,000 jobs supposedly “created or saved.”

Read the whole thing, and don’t miss clicking on the link for the map. Ah, well, it’s only $787 billion, I’m sure there’s more where that came from.

For Congressional Democrats, it never rains, but it pours. If they thought their votes for the ’stimulus’ bill might look better with time, the White House has some bad news.

National Journal has posted a transcript of its interview with ’stimulus’ overseer Earl Devaney. If you opposed porkulus, the interview is as frustrating and entertaining as you’d expect. If you voted for it, you might want to brush up that resume and look for new opportunities:

NJ: Tell us about how you came into this job and what it is.

Devaney: …The other mission is sort of less intuitive, and it is quite a mystery to me why Congress would think the building of the government’s largest Web site ever would be something that 12 IGs could do. I think at the end of the day, they said to themselves, what group of people would be more guaranteed of getting the data up — good, bad or ugly, whatever it is — up on this Web site.

So, right now, we have a Web site up and running. We don’t envision what is up there now, which we call 1.0, is what the act envisions. Nor is it something that I’m particularly proud of…

NJ: Isn’t transparency sometimes dangerous to those in power?

Devaney: I think politicians have got their heads around the good sides of transparency. What they haven’t got their minds around is the downside of transparency. Come October 11, there are going to be things up on that Web site that embarrass people, clearly. I don’t think it is one party or the other. Everyone is going to be embarrassed to some extent.

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Anyone who remembers, say, his campaign pronouncement that a Kansas tornado had left “ten thousand dead” and “an entire town destroyed” (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve people) knows that President Barack Obama (D-IL) hasn’t been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.

However, his dogged refusal to deviate from his standard talking point of “150,000 jobs created or saved” by the $787,000,000,000.00 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the “stimulus package,” or, my personal favorite, “Porkulus”) is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching by observers.

A Claim Unchanged by Time

Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now. On May 27, “White House economic advisers” announced the “stimulus” had “created or saved 150,000 jobs” since its inception 100 days before — an average increase (or savings) of about 1,500 jobs a day. Twelve days later, on June 8, Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) made the same proclamation on a conference call with reporters: the stimulus had “saved or created 150,000 [jobs]” to date.

Theoretically, there should have been about 18,000 more jobs than that, given the twelve day interval between the May 27 announcement and the June 8 call, but never mind that. Just for good measure, despite the fact economists and simple observers who had the virtue of being awake alike were throwing up their hands in disbelief that a presidential administration would actually make such a claim about something as obviously incalculable as a “saved” job, Biden added the assertion that there had been “no ‘reasonable’ challenges to the estimates.”

Last Wednesday, July 8 — a full 30 days after the Biden conference call, and 42 after the initial 100 day claim of “150,000 jobs created or saved,” Mr. Obama’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget announced the “stimulus” had — you guessed it! — “created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February.”

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Wow. This is just about the nastiest insult liberals can dish out:

I’m not too happy with the policy justifications we’re getting from the administration. It’s perfectly clear that the stimulus was too small; I think they know that too. But they’ve made a political judgment that (a) they can’t push another round through and (b) the thing to do right now is defend the policy they already have.

Maybe they’re right. But it does bring back unpleasant echoes of what I thought of as the Bush administration’s Vegematic approach to tax cuts: it slices, it dices, it purees! In other words, whatever policy they had been advocating in the past was still the perfect answer to whatever problems the economy faces now.

Krugman follows by asserting that ‘Obama is nothing like Bush.’ Right - except for trying to sell his preconceived spending agenda as the perfect answer for everything that was wrong with America, he’s nothing like Bush.

It’s worth noting the implicit criticisms Krugman levels: Obama either doesn’t understand the problems with the economy or lacks the conviction to address those problems. Chalk up one more case of buyer’s remorse.

I pointed out yesterday that Democrats made a major mistake when they tied their credibility to porkulus, and then allowed Capitol Hill to debate health care rationing and cap-and-tax at the same time. Congress cannot both walk and chew gum - especially when they’re starting to worry about the 2010 political climate. The fights over which should be a top priority, and the uncertainty over the full cost of the Obama agenda, make it very difficult for Members of Congress to decide how to proceed.

As a result, it should be no surprise that Democrat leaders can’t rope a restive caucus together - even to debut the first draft of a health care rationing bill:

House Democrats’ health care bill has been delayed indefinitely as leaders continue negotiations with fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

Committee chairmen had planned to release their bill on Friday and begin marking it up on Monday, but notices were sent out this morning noting that both the release and markup would be delayed.

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When President Obama selected Rahm Emanuel to serve as White House Chief of Staff, most commentators hailed it as a coup. We were told that Rahm was brilliant, and that his love for brass-knuckles politics would prove invaluable in moving the president’s agenda through Congress. As a veteran of the Clinton White House, he would be sure not to repeat the mistakes Clinton made early in 1993. And because Rahm had come from the House of Representatives, and had been DCCC chair when the Democrats won a majority in the House, scores of Democrats would listen to him. Love him or hate him, all were confident that Rahm would be effective.

Is it too early to ask if something went wrong?

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I don’t know whether to be angry or to rejoice:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Wednesday urged House members to consider another stimulus package just for infrastructure projects in order to produce more jobs…

“I would like to see a second stimulus devoted solely to infrastructure,” he said. “It’s what produces jobs, and produces orders for factories, American factories…”

“Look, I think the stimulus bill was misnamed,” he said. “Part of it was stimulus, part of it was job creation, but a lot of it was relief,” such as increased unemployment insurance and food stamps.

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This is a time of great opportunity for conservatives. Americans are beginning to render a verdict on the ’stimulus,’ the economy, and the Obama administration’s approach. The nation continues to shed jobs, and unemployment shows no signs of leveling off any time soon. The American people are growing more and more concerned about the deficit. And the Obama administration seems split on whether another ’stimulus’ is needed, or whether Barack Obama wouldn’t do a single thing differently.

For conservatives, the time is right to tell the American people the truth: the porkulus was always a bad idea. It cannot help economic growth. It should be repealed. And if you want to promote growth and hiring, reduce the tax and regulatory burdens that deter job creation.

Congressman Eric Cantor - hailed by many as one of the party’s rising stars - almost seems to get it. But when it comes right down to it, he can’t even state clear opposition to the porkulus:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Monday he will request a meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss another stimulus package, but he said it should be paid for by cutting waste from the first one.

“I don’t think there’s any question that our priority over the next month should be this economy,” Cantor told reporters on a conference call. “We stand ready and willing to stand with the president and produce a bill that will generate results….”

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From Gallup:

The sharp decline in Gallup’s Index of Investor Optimism in June — particularly the plunge in expectations for the economy — suggests that investors may be losing some of their hopes for an immediate improvement in the U.S. economy later this year. This is consistent with the leveling off of consumers’ mood over the past few weeks and the drop in the consumer sentiment index on Tuesday.

Gallup’s job-market and consumer spending measures suggest that the reality on Main Street has not improved substantially over the past couple of months. Perhaps the average investor and the American consumer see the fragile nature of the current U.S. economy more clearly than do those on Wall Street.

As Nouriel Roubini says:

Job report suggests that green shoots are yellow weeds turning into brown manure. Jobs & hours & wage losses are pushing down labor income

How do you like the ’stimulus’ so far?

The conventional wisdom among liberals seems to be that the economy is improving - even if it has nothing to do with the ’stimulus’ - but because employment is a lagging indicator, another massive spending bill may be needed to improve the unemployment picture. The New Republic’s John Judis argues for such a spending package. But unlike the upbeat liberals who argue that unemployment is merely lagging an improving economy, Judis argues that the economy is still collapsing:

Harvard economist Jeff Frankel takes this argument a step further, arguing that if you want to use employment figures to gauge economic recovery, you should look at the total hours worked rather than at the number of employed, because the beginning of a recovery businesses are likely to increase production by getting their employees to work overtime, or by raising them from part-time to full-time, rather than by hiring new workers. Frankel notes that increased work hours correlated with the beginning of recovery for both the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions.

If you apply this gauge to the current situation, there is little reason for optimism. Though some have used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May figures–which showed that the rate of unemployment growth had been slightly reduced–to predict an imminent recovery, Frankel observes that if you look at the figures in terms of hours worked rather than people employed, “the rate of decline (0.7%) was very much in line with the rate of contraction that workers have experienced since September.” Indeed, in May, the average length of the work week fell to its lowest total since 1964–a sign that businesses are cutting back by reducing their employees’ hours. “The labor market does not quite yet suggest that the economy has hit bottom,” Frankel concluded diplomatically.

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Largely lost in the wake of Barack Obama’s press conference yesterday is the news that he is apparently still considering another ’stimulus’ bill to try to get the economy moving again:

President Obama said he is “not yet” ready to ask for a second stimulus package even as polls show Americans growing increasingly more skeptical of how effective the president’s first attempt to create jobs has been.

In his fourth press conference from the White House since taking office, Obama told reporters Tuesday that he is not ready or even sure he needs to ask for a second stimulus package to complement the $787 billion package Obama and Democrats pushed through Congress not long after the president took the oath of office.

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Remember how having a bunch of brilliant grown-ups in the White House was going to restore our tattered relations with key allies? And how the ’stimulus’ bill would create millions of jobs here in the United States?

Instead, the bill has sparked a trade war with Canada - one that will get worse if it is not addressed. And while the Obama team can offer only guesses as to how many ’stimulus jobs’ fit on the head of a pin, we can already point to 600 Pennsylvania steelworkers who are losing their jobs as a direct result of the bill:

Canadian and American business leaders joined forces Thursday to warn of the growing threat to prosperity in both countries due to the so-called Buy American provisions in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.

“You can see billions of dollars that are in jeopardy, and tied to those billions of dollars are jobs,” Myron Brilliant, senior vice-president of international affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told a news conference in Washington.

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With the federal deficit spiraling out of control, with unemployment approaching 10 percent, and with confidence in the Obama economic plan waning, it might be useful to go back and look at what team Obama promised if the porkulus passed:

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Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, Republican of Irvine, is running for Senate in the hopes of challenging and defeating Senator Barbara Boxer (Dunce-California) in November 2010. He’s gotten off to an early start, but he needs it, because he’s definitely an underdog. California has not elected a Republican Senator since Pete Wilson in 1986, nor have we elected a pro-life politician to a statewide office since Attorney General Dan Lungren won in 1994, and before that the re-election of Governor George Deukmejian in 1986. It’s been a long time.

Chuck DeVore has a plan, though. During a conference call today with online activists and ‘bloggers,’ which your reporter was able to listen in on, he said that he’s consciously attempting to mimic the successful strategies followed by Barack Obama in his underdog victory over Hillary Clinton last year. He intends to use the Internet and the grass roots to get more done than Republicans in his position have in the past.

He’s ready on the issues, too, and not just the tools of politics.

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ABC and others report that the Obama administration has invited union representatives to participate in conference calls with state and local officials, which have been held to set guidelines for how ’stimulus’ money is spent.

As first reported in the Los Angeles Times, California officials have said that representatives of the Service Employees International Union were given unprecedented access to an April 15 conference call between federal and state officials in which the state was made to justify its plan to slash $74 million from its budget by cutting health aids’ maximum salaries by $2 an hour.

State officials, speaking on background, said the cuts were essential to balancing the budget and were surprised that representatives of the SEIU — one of the country’s largest labor unions, and one of President Obama’s biggest campaign contributors — were present on the call.

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‘Bipartisan’ has different meanings to different people. For example, the stimulus bill got just 3 2 Republican votes. Was that a bipartisan effort? According to Reid, one vote is enough to make a bill bipartisan. And based on his comments here at least, a bill can be bipartisan even when only Democrats vote for it:

Remember, “bipartisan,” as we learned with the effort on the recovery package, we only needed two. Right now we only need one. But as I told McConnell after Specter indicated he was going to change parties, we’re going to try to do our best to get along — you know, the Rodney King deal. We believe — I believe, and I believe I’ve changed the way the Senate’s worked in the last 15 or 20 years, this last 100 days by saying, “You want amendments? Offer amendments. You want to offer one on abortion? Go ahead. You want to offer one on gun control? Go ahead.” We’re not concerned about protecting people from taking tough votes. We need to get a bill that is good for the American people, and if we just jam one through without giving the Republicans options to be part of the process, it won’t be as accepted…

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I have not yet blogged about Recovery.org, the indispensable site set up by Onvia to keep track of how the Obama administration is spending your ’stimulus’ money. Recovery.org offers a number of ways to search - by state, county and program. They provide updates on how much stimulus funding is spent over time, and how may jobs the administration contends have been created (or saved). The site is doing quite well considering that it must rely on federal agencies for much of its information.

While Recover.org is a private site, the Obama administration has also set up its own site - Recovery.gov. It does not seem to be as up-to-date as the private site, but you can’t really expect a government agency to to move as efficiently or nimbly as the private sector. But while they may lag behind, they’re doing their best to ensure that Recovery.gov is running smoothly by… October:

During a recent field hearing in Brooklyn, N.Y., House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said Recovery.gov is “not a useful database where citizens can go to see where their money is being spent.” Do you agree with that assessment? How long will it be before the site meets its goals?

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Do you remember that $200 million earmarked by Congressional Democrats for re-sodding the national mall? Do you recall how Democrats and the White House were so embarrassed about the project that they at last deleted it from the legislation - and then complained loudly any time Republicans failed to note that they had eliminated it?

Well, it turns out they’re spending it anyway:

More than $55 million in economic stimulus money will be used to fix the National Mall, even though money for mall renovations was removed during congressional debate on the stimulus package this winter…

In January, majority Democrats removed $200 million in stimulus funding that had been targeted for the National Mall, after Republicans criticized it as an example of wasteful spending.

Salazar called the money being spent to renovate the Mall a “down payment” on a much larger challenge to fix a national symbol that has fallen into disrepair. He said the mall does not belong to the District of Columbia but to the nation, and called it an important symbol for all Americans.

This is just one more demonstration that ideas for more spending never really die in Washington; they always come back. Can stimulus funds for condoms be far behind?