The $862 billion “stimulus” that Democrats in Congress approved last year has been a huge, expensive failure. It has not kept unemployment at or below 8 percent, as President Barack Obama promised it would do. Joblessness today is nearly 10 percent. Our national debt is far larger because of the stimulus, too.
So wouldn’t it make sense either to pull back some unspent stimulus funds altogether, or at least to spend them on something more productive?
That is what Republicans in Congress have tried to do again and again this year. They have proposed using unspent stimulus funds to extend unemployment benefits to the millions of laid-off American workers whom the “stimulus” obviously has not helped to find jobs.
But time and again, Democrats have refused to cut out the unproductive stimulus funds, preferring instead to pay for extended jobless benefits by adding to our devastating $13 trillion national debt. They even claim that Republicans are “mean” or “heartless” for opposing the Democrats’ deficit spending on the unemployed. But Republicans are willing to help the unemployed. They just want to do it in a way that does not make our unsustainable debt even worse.
This little charade is playing out once again in Washington, with the GOP pleading with Democrats to cut wasteful stimulus spending and redirect the savings into jobless benefits. But Republicans’ most recent attempt to do this “was easily killed on a mostly party-line vote,” The Associated Press reported.