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Jobs ‘saved’ by ‘stimulus’ reduced to 2.5 million.

This week.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  February 16th, 2009 at 04:33 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Contra Wizbang and Roger Kimball, this is actually the latest estimate of Mark Zandi, not the Obama administration itself. What the Obama administration is merely doing is trying to lower the expectations of their debt bill:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- President Barack Obama’s aides warned Americans on Sunday not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually.

[I'm snipping the nonsense about how this was Obama's first major legislative victory. The sentence should more properly read: "It was the legislature's first major victory over his young presidency." - ML]

“There will be signs of activity very quickly,” David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it’s going to take time for that to show up in the statistics. The president has said it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”


“Activity” is such a nice, bloodless word, isn’t it? It reminds me of a quote from CS Lewis:

“But that would be putting the clock back,” gasped the governor. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”

“I have seen them both in an egg,” said Caspian. “We call it Going Bad in Narnia.”

To put it more bluntly: there’s a lot of activity in a hunk of meat left out in the sun for a week, too. To put it especially bluntly: this bill is not worth the paper that it’s printed on.  Right now popular opinion is firmly that this bill is not going to do anything significantly useful.  38% think that it’ll help, 29% think that’ll it hurt – and 24% think that it won’t do much at all, which would beg the question of why we’re in such a hurry to get this thing signed, except that we already know the answer.  The Democrats played hurry-up-and-wait on it because they know that the longer they waited, the worse off the Democrats would be.

Remember that, next Election Day.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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  • willtenn

    The save part is for later consumption by the in-step media. What I heard and what millions of Americans heard was that the “stimulus” was going to CREATE 4 million jobs and create them quickly. The save part was for the “don’t you remember?” when nowhere close to a million jobs, much less 4 million, are created in the next 12 months.

    By my calculations however, at least a half-million jobs could be created as independent contractors (so there is no unionization don’t you know!) working for ACORN on estimating the “census” and for the National Conference of Civil Rights to help “minorities” make the difficult (and I’m sure racist and homophobic) transition to digiital television.

  • Old_Crow

    jobs, the Obama spin will be ‘well, we would have lost 4 million if we didn’t have the stimulus’. Arrogance, ignorance and an incurious nature are a dangerous combination in a leader.

    At least Timmy G. at Treasury doesn’t pretend to know the answers, he admits he doesn’t have a clue what to do and just wants to be liked.

  • Praveen

    What are dems thinking. There must be a thought process. Here is what I think will happen.

    There is no way to measure “saved” jobs. The President has been consistently saying that “its going to get worse before it gets better”. They can always claim “saved jobs”.

    The stimulus will do enough for leftist organizations. And this will keep lefties in support.

    Economy will get better in 2-3 years. They can always claim economy got better because of effects of the stimulus.

    GOP must push hard on each and every issue that is socialist in nature.

  • Praying

    These stinkin’ radical liberals want to DESTROY the US, the constitution, to create a permanent class of underprivileged serfs that are totally dependent on the government for everything, so that they stay in office. They want to destroy capitalism, because they don’t understand it, and punish all of us “rich, successful people.” If you can’t beat ‘em, eliminate ‘em. So we have a bunch of LOSERS that are going to play by their own rules, steal all our toys and hard-earned symbols of prosperity and success, and leave us nothing. They are going to leave our children and grandchildren worse off than their parents/grandparents, with either a horrific debt or inflation like we’ve never seen before. The “stimulus” bill had NOTHING to do with improving the economy, and EVERYTHING to do with providing cover to push the most radical, socialistic agenda ever seen in this country. And it’s interesting how quickly it all came together, almost as though it had been in the works for some time. Like someone knew this “crisis” was going to happen. Like someone even “helped” this crisis to happen. Anyone seen George Soros lately?

  • izoneguy

    are we going to lay down and let them screw us?

    I say when the time is right and we have nothing to lose

    but our lives then the feet will hit the street and the left

    will feel the heat.

  • suzieQ

    The economy, regardless of the stimulus, will turn around. This is due to many different factors, which have nothing to do with the stimulus, and would have happened just fine without it. Once that happens, they can point and claim that the stimulus “worked”. Also, it provides a cudgel come election time for them to beat about the various republican districts. If roads, schools, police, whatever, needs money in a republican district, the democratic challenger can claim that the sitting rep voted against it – because he voted against the stimulus.

    At the same time, the right wing will have a very hard time explaining (through the media, no doubt) to the average guy that the economic turn-around had nothing to do with the stimulus.

  • JHancock

    but about Democrat control, socalism, and government power.
    Remember “Big Brother Loves You!”-so much in fact that he want’s to make you his b**ch, screw you, and control every aspect of your life-just like a bad boyfriend in a wife-beater.

    AND THAT’S what the stimulus bill is really about-salvation for and complete control over the masses, in a system where everyone is equal….except the Donkeys who are more equal…and in charge

  • jackbenimble

    You are right. The way they have stated their goals for the stimulus bill it will be nearly impossible for them to find themselves in a situation where they can’t claim success. As long as there are still 4 million Americans at some job in America, THOSE will be the jobs that Obama saved.

    But whatever victory Obama can claim we must never let it be anything but what it is: a pyrrhic victory. Spending a trillion dollars of money we don’t have puts a burden on our grandchildren that is unacceptable no matter how many jobs it saves.

  • IJB

    There’s a predisposition from some people here to just assume that no matter what happens Obama will claim that “I saved 2.5/3.5/4/10!!! million jobs with my bill”, and everyone outside of RedState will just lap it up.

    Well, I can promise you, if/when we hit 10% unemployment, everyone who’s not a partisan Democrat is not going to care a fig about Obama’s claims – all they’re going to want to know is HOW DID WE GET TO 10% UNEMPLOYMENT, AND WHY HASN’T OBAMA DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!!!

    I think the Dems, and some people around here, fall into the trap of believing that all you have to do is “frame” an issue, and “you win”. In reality, “frames” fail when they totally conflict with reality and facts on the ground.

    Unfortunately for the Dems, they’ve fallen into a trap of their own making here – no one is paying attention to their “frame”. What people are hearing is Obama promised to create “4 million new jobs” *NET*. (And trying to talk the figure down to 2.5 mil after the fact will absolutely not work.)

    I’m going to enjoy watching the fallout from this stimulus bill – the Dems have put it out there in such a way that it’s virtually *guaranteed* to blow up in their faces. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

    (Rule #1 of politics: Underpromise, and overdeliver, *not* the other way around!)

  • DerKrieger

    …needs to do something it almost never does, get in front of this NOW because:

    a) it is impossible to measure a “saved” job. There is simply no way of knowing whether or not a job would have been eliminated save for the stimulus bill and

    b) ALL recessions eventually turn around. Again, you cannot disprove a negative. When the economy eventually does turn around Obama will take credit because a turnaround is inevitable. What we will never know is how quickly a turnaround would have occurred if our pols had done nothing or done something different.

    So, before the socialists can take credit for eventualities the GOP needs to hammer the message home.

  • Praveen

    I am not “fear” mongering. I am just looking to point out the fierce urgency of getting out of this scheme. We will need to keep a very sharp eye. No responsible behavior preachings please. We need to win every opportunity however tiny it may seem. Everything matters here.

    The 30% permanent growth pointed out by “Mike GC” needs to be pointed out over and over again. The baseline increase in the budget needs to be hammered in the minds of voters.

    And yes as Erick pointed out we will need to get local.

    See the news from Venezuela yesterday? President Obama is playing Chavez on the country.

    Socialism is here. I hope its not here to stay.

  • willtenn

    I do not have a library of clips regarding this stimulus, but I do not recall Pelosi or Reid ever saying “SAVE” jobs, it was always “CREATE” 4 million jobs. Yes, Obama cleverly in his pc switched back and forth from “create OR save” to just “create”, but the GOP should always and only talk in terms of whether this spending bill CREATES 4 million jobs.

    As far as the economy being cyclical, I agree. But I also believe there are such fundamental problems with this country and economy that any cyclical “recovery” will be very mild. I know the strength of diversity can overcome any problem, but aside from the spending bill, I have real concerns that this downturn may be to much for even mighty diversity to overcome.