When children eat too much candy, the “sugar high” can make them hyperactive. But soon the sugar wears off, and they become sluggish.
The $862 billion federal “stimulus” is looking like a short-term “sugar high,” too – with a sluggish economy and a lack of jobs as the consequences.
The stimulus, which was supposed to “create or save” private-sector jobs, instead propped up mainly government jobs while the private sector continued to suffer. But soon, even the private-sector jobs the stimulus may have “created or saved” are going to begin collapsing as government funding for the jobs dries up.
The Houston Chronicle noted a few hundred construction jobs in Houston and elsewhere that were paid for with $88 million in stimulus funds (at a cost of $187,000 per job!) The projects will end soon, “leaving the workers searching for new jobs,” the newspaper reported. “Multiply [that] situation by 4,000 and you begin to understand the scope of the economic challenge soon to be faced nationwide as federal stimulus funding ends.”
But that frightening “challenge” is no surprise. Conservatives warned before Democrats passed the huge stimulus bill that government spending to create make-work jobs is not the same as private-sector investment and real job creation. They challenged the notion that government spending would “jump start” the economy. (Current unemployment is nearly 10 percent – far higher than before the stimulus passed – which certainly seems to suggest that the “jump starting” never took place.)
Those warnings were ignored, however. Now, the end of the stimulus “is forcing recipients to scramble for new ways to pay for the jobs – or face layoffs,” the Houston paper noted.
The “few jobs [the stimulus] did create have been temporary and unsustainable,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told the paper.
The stimulus “sugar” is rapidly wearing off, leaving serious economic consequences in its wake.