The $787 billion stimulus bill was supposed to be the key ingredient to get our economy back on track. Predictions were dire about what would happen if lawmakers did not agree to spend all that money. The Obama administration breathlessly warned that unemployment could get as high as 9 percent without the stimulus to jolt spending by consumers, businesses and, most of all, government. With the stimulus, the administration said, unemployment would stay below 8 percent and soon drop to more tolerable levels.
So with almost zero Republican support, the Democrat majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives passed the stimulus.
It didn't work.
Not only has the stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent, but joblessness is now worse than what the administration predicted it would be without the stimulus. Unemployment since the stimulus stands at 9.5 percent. And in the face of those horrible numbers, the Obama administration is admitting that joblessness is going to get worse.
"White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said last week that the president expects the nation will reach 10 percent unemployment within the next few months," The Associated Press reported.
So the money is gone, and the jobs are disappearing with it.
That prompted House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, to ask a painfully obvious question: "After all of this spending, after all of this borrowing from China, the Middle East, our children and our grandchildren, where are the jobs?"
That, alas, is the $787 billion question.
The premise that the stimulus package was suppose to be a cure was and is a Republican gambit.
No one, not even the Democrats, predicted that the stimulus package would turn the ecnomy around. No one guaranteed the stimulus package would prevent the loss of more jobs, bankruptcies etc.
The stimulus package was designed to prevent a total ecnomic collapse. It was not supposed to be a cure.
To say the stimulus package didn't work is akin to saying that the blood pressure medicine a patient took didn't work because he still ultimately suffered a stroke. The problem is, we don't know how soon or how severely our economy would have stroked without the stimulus.
The stimulus package was never intended to be a cure. Only the Republicans touted it as such - because as a cure, it would be easy to claim it was a failure.
This editorial assumes that we were actually niave enough to believe the Republican idea that the stimulus package was designed to be a cure. I didn't fall for it then, and I'm not buying it now, either.
This plan would have never passed a bankruptcy court judge for an individual. Can you imagine? Your Honor, if you will approve a large enough loan, I can spend my way out of bankruptcy. I will not retire any debt but I will provide jobs for others by purchasing products. If you don't approve this plan immediately I forsee economic disaster. What a joke.
It's the bottom of the fifth inning, the Braves are down 0-3 so most the fans get up and leave, the sportscasters predict the game is a lost cause and the team sits there in the dugout with their heads hanging low. Is that the way it really goes? No, the fans hang in there and cheer, the sportscasters shout each play and the team plays their hearts out down to the wire.
You right wingers can keep calling the game in the fifth inning, but it ain't over till it's over. Millions of Americans depend on it.
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