There are already serious questions about whether the federal “stimulus” has generated the mostly private-sector jobs that President Barack Obama claimed it would “create or save” when he was urging Congress to pass it – or whether most of the jobs supported by the stimulus have propped up or expanded government.
Now an analysis by McClatchy Newspapers suggests that the $862 billion stimulus may not even be targeting the areas where all that borrowed money presumably could do the most good.
The extensive analysis found that “some parts of the country have benefited far more from the (stimulus) than others have, that some sectors of the economy are benefiting far more than others are, and that it’s difficult to detail exactly where all the money has gone,” McClatchy reported.
As it turns out, some of the highest per-capita spending from the stimulus went not to the states with the worst unemployment rates but to those with the lowest joblessness rates.
Take this jarring example: In North Dakota, unemployment is at an enviably low 3.6 percent. But that state has gotten more stimulus cash per capita than Nevada has received – even though Nevada’s unemployment rate is 14.2 percent, or nearly four times as high as the rate in North Dakota.
That’s a bit like small towns across the country that have gotten lots of so-called “homeland security” dollars to defend against terrorist attacks, even though any such attack would almost certainly target big cities rather than those small towns.
Highlighting the uncertainty of whether stimulus-related job creation has been very significant, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the job creation figure at somewhere between 1.4 million and 3.4 million. With a gap that big – 2 million jobs! – the obvious question is, do the “experts” really have a clear grasp of whether the stimulus has accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish?
We strongly suspect it hasn’t.