HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

WRONG AGAIN: White House Can’t Get its Facts Straight on “Stimulus”

Once again, the White House can’t get its facts straight on its nearly trillion-dollar “stimulus.”  Now it is falsely claiming that House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “claimed credit” for stimulus projects in Ohio after he joined all House Republicans in strongly opposing the Democrats’ $862 billion monstrosity that has failed to produce the jobs they promised.  It’s no surprise that this latest claim is just flat wrong too.

Here are the facts: In March 2009, Ohio’s Republican congressional delegation wrote to Governor Ted Strickland (D-OH) expressing their frustration that Ohio would allocate approximately $57 million in federal “stimulus” dollars to a slush fund to study projects that may never get built instead of projects that are “shovel-ready.”  This Associated Press report details the scheme, reporting that Ohio “transportation officials passed over some ready-to-go construction projects and steered about 7 percent of their $774 million share for planning and preliminary studies.”  Strickland ignored the letter and kept the slush fund open.

On April 16, Ohio Republicans wrote to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking him to investigate Ohio’s plans to create this slush-fund.  Several months later, federal officials took action to shut Gov. Strickland’s slush fund down and order the state to put the money into shovel-ready projects.

In a statement released on June 15, 2009, Boehner thanked federal officials for shutting down Gov. Strickland’s slush fund.  Boehner stated that “[t]he stated intent of the so-called stimulus package was to create jobs, and certainly a $57 million slush-fund studying projects did nothing to achieve that goal.” At no time did Boehner “take credit for” any project or “praise” the stimulus bill.

More than three million Americans have lost their job since the Democrats’ “stimulus” was enacted – the same “stimulus” that media reports have shown is chock full of waste, fraud and abuse.  Yet this White House still can’t answer the one question on Americans’ mind: “Where are the jobs?”

Instead of making false claims, it’s long past time for this White House to do what it promised: work in a bipartisan way to focus on helping small businesses create jobs for American families struggling in today’s economy.

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As the President Visits, Ohioans Are Asking “Where Are the Jobs?”

President Obama is holding a town hall meeting at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, near Cleveland, today, the same day that Ohio’s unemployment rate increased from 10.6 percent to 10.9 percent.  In fact, a CNN report this morning showed that a total of 43 states reported rising jobless rates in December.   As families and small businesses continue to struggle, everyone in Ohio, and indeed all Americans, are asking “Where are the jobs?“  But all they are getting from the Democrats who control Washington is more spending and more debt.  The Chicago Tribune’s blog “The Swamp” chronicles the response from House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to the President’s trip today:

In Washington, House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who has long hammered Obama with a repeating refrain of “Where are the Jobs?” said today that the president has failed to deliver on a promise of jobs that he has made before in the Buckeye State.

“When he last visited Elyria, candidate Obama promised that as president he would enact a ‘job creation agenda.”’ Boehner said today.

“Yet for the past year, Ohioans have watched anxiously as Washington Democrats’, with the approval of President Obama, have pushed a job-killing agenda that includes a ‘stimulus’ that isn’t working, a government takeover of health care that will raise taxes… a ‘cap and trade’ national energy tax (and other measures) that will devastate Ohio’s economy and kill jobs at a time we can least afford it.”

(President Barack Obama is pictured above with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) landing in Cleveland today for a tour and town-hall styled meeting in Lorain County. Photo by David Richard / AP. See the rest of the story and the president’s prepared remarks below:)

Noting the newest report of unemployment in Ohio today, the Republican House leader said: “A jobless recovery is a far cry from what Ohio’s hard-working families were promised.”

The president was also welcomed to Cleveland today with an Op-ed signed by Boehner in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“Just three days have passed since voters in Massachusetts, one of the bluest of blue states, delivered the president a clear, stinging indictment of his big-government agenda by electing Republican Scott Brown to fill the U.S. Senate seat held for 47 years by the late Ted Kennedy,’’ Boehner wrote. “Many Democrats lost in the upside-down world that is Washington are still wondering, how could this be?”

“Tuesday’s results should come as no surprise, however,’’ he wrote. “For more than nine months, a political rebellion has been brewing as Americans have watched with angst as Washington Democrats have pushed job-killing policies that have only made a bad jobs situation even worse. Nowhere is this more evident than in the state of Ohio.”

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Nearly One Year After the “Stimulus,” Where are the Jobs?

One year ago this month, Congress began debate on the Democrats’ trillion-dollar “stimulus” package.  Democrats sold the unprecedented spending binge on the promise that it would create jobs “immediately” and that it would hold the unemployment rate below eight percent. 

By the metrics the Democrats themselves set, the “stimulus” hasn’t worked – it’s chock full of wasteful government spending that’s funneled money to Congressional districts that don’t exist and claims of jobs “saved or created” were so exaggerated that the Administration quietly abandoned the metric last month. 

After the Democrats passed their “stimulus” and started on their quest to have the government takeover health care, House Republicans kept their focus on one question: “where are the jobs?”  Ever since then, Republicans – and the American people – have been focused on the economy, while Democrats have fiddled fruitlessly with a government takeover of health care Americans don’t want, as a  CNN poll out today confirms:

More than half of all Americans think unemployment is the most important economic issue facing the country, according to a new national poll.  Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say joblessness is the most pressing economic issue right now.

There’s good reason for Americans to be worried about the unemployment situation – not only has unemployed hovered around 10 percent, but the number of Americans who have been unemployed long term – 27 weeks or longer – has never been higher than it is today, as the following chart, courtesy of Clusterstock, clearly shows:

The Economist explained why Americans are so concerned about the employment:

Around four in every ten of the unemployed—some 6m Americans—have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. That is the highest rate since this particular record began, in 1948.  These workers may forget their skills; and many began with few skills anyway.  Just as troubling is a drop of 1.5m in the civilian labour force (which excludes unemployed workers who have stopped looking for work).  That is unprecedented in the post-war period.  If those who have stopped looking were counted, the unemployment rate would be much higher.  These discouraged workers represent a reservoir of labour-market slack that will dry up only with strong economic growth.

The Economist went on to note that, “Without job growth, household indebtedness will linger as a problem, depressing spending and hiring.  Joblessness is a trap the American labour force may not soon escape.”

But the Democrats’ job-killing agenda is discouraging small businesses from hiring – putting a damper on entrepreneurship and ingenuity the American economy needs to pull itself out of this deep recession.  The federal government has been spending money we don’t have with reckless abandon in the vain hope that by vastly expanding the size of the federal government, we can somehow create prosperity and new jobs.  

As President Reagan was fond of saying, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

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Outrage: CBS News Reports that “Stimulus” Funds Have Gone to Martini Bars, Puppet Shows

Last night, the CBS Evening News reported on yet another revelation of “stimulus” waste, fraud, and abuse.   The latest news of “stimulus” waste came courtesy of a study released by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ), entitled “Stimulus Checkup,” which took a closer look at 100 projects funded by the Democrats’ $1 trillion “stimulus” and highlighted 100 wasteful “stimulus” projects worth at least $7 billion - but “saved or created” few actual jobs.

The latest projects that taxpayer dollars are funding include a martini bar, a Brazilian steak house, a water pipeline, a money-losing golf course in San Francisco, fossil research in Argentina, puppet shows - and much, much more. 

As CBS News reported:

The public’s overall assessment of the condition of the national economy remains grim; 77 percent of Americans say the economy is in bad shape.  The economic stimulus package was supposed to help with that. As of the end of November, the government has spent $217 billion in stimulus, and two Republican Senators say that at least 15 percent of it has been pure waste….

You probably wouldn’t guess that a martini bar and a Brazilian steak house would be on tap for stimulus funds. But in St. Joseph, Missouri the two privately-owned facilities are getting $100,000 of your tax dollars.

The contrast with the latest report of “stimulus” waste and a “Memorandum to Head of Departments and Agencies” penned by Obama Administration Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on February 9 is remarkable.  They wrote:

We cannot overstate the importance of this effort.  We are asking the American people to trust their government with an unprecedented level of funding to address the economic emergency.  In return, we must prove to them that their dollars are being invested in initiatives and strategies that make a difference in their communities and across the country.

Clearly, their own “stimulus” has failed to meet that test.

As early as next week, Democrats will move to raise the debt ceiling “by as much as $1.8 trillion… nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year,” Politico noted today.   Judging by the way out-of-touch Washington Democrats spent taxpayer money in just one year, why should the American people trust them with one more dime of their hard-earned money?

The American people deserve better than the out-of-control spending, borrowing, and taxing Washington Democrats have been offering up all year.  Republicans have a better solution: a no-cost jobs proposal, which House Republican Leaders discussed just yesterday with the President.  Read more about it HERE; see the letter House Republicans wrote to the President HERE.

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“Stimulus” Funds Going to China, Spain –Wasn’t it Supposed to Create “Job, Jobs, Jobs” in America?

Not a week goes by without more revelations of “stimulus” funds being misused, whether it’s a $3.1 million “Canal Boat” Museum in New York, a $550,000 skateboard park in Rhode Island, or billions of dollars that went to “phantom” Congressional districts - including 10 Ohio Congressional districts that don’t exist.  

But the latest example of “stimulus” waste is a true shocker: hundreds of millions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money has gone to foreign companies that have “few restrictions on the how the grants can be used,” according to a recent report by  American University’s “Investigative Reporting Workshop.”  The restrictions are so sparse, in fact, that American tax dollars could even be used to “pay shareholders” of the foreign companies in question.  

The report found that: 

[O]f the $1.05 billion in clean-energy grants handed out by the government since Sept. 1, 84 percent - a total of $849 million - has gone to foreign wind companies. Spanish utility company, Iberdrola S.A., alone has collected $545 million through its American subsidiary.

And Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute noted yesterday that:

One wind farm project that was planned using $450 million in stimulus money would have paid for the windmill construction in China, creating 2,000-3,000 jobs for the Chinese, but only 300 temporary and 30 permanent jobs here in the United States.

The following chart of where the “stimulus” money speaks for itself:

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More Troubling Economic News in Advance of the White House “Jobs Summit”

This morning, more troubling economic news was released confirming that the economy is continuing to shed jobs by the thousands, just a day before the White House convenes a “jobs summit,” which the Administration has already conceded won’t involve “concrete proposals.”

Automatic Data Processing (ADP), a payroll-processing firm, reported this morning that “private employers shed 169,000 jobs in November,” according to Reuters.  The Financial Times reported that, “[a]lthough the November figure was an improvement on October’s revised figure of 195,000, it was higher than economists had been expecting,” and Bloomberg News added that “[t]he report signals the job market is still deteriorating and unemployment will probably climb further even as the economy is emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s.”

When Democrats rushed a 1,100 page, $1 trillion “stimulus” through Congress earlier this year, they promised that unemployment would not rise above eight percent, and that job creation will begin “almost immediately” thereafter.   But nearly a year later, more than three million more Americans are without jobs, the deficit is at a record $1.4 trillion, and “reports on jobs created or saved by the $787 billion economic stimulus package are ‘riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions,’” noted USA Today.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) commented today that:

Families are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ but all they are getting from out-of-touch Washington Democrats is more spending and more debt piled on our kids and grandkids.  The American people deserve a government that lives within its means and fully commits itself to creating good-paying jobs, and only Republicans have proposed solutions to give them exactly what they want.  Now more than ever, America needs more jobs, not more debt.

Over on CNBC, Rick Santelli reacted to today’s jobs numbers by blasting the lack of focus on creating jobs by the White House:

I think I look at the jobs number in the following fashion.   Jobs has been the absolute number one issue in most people’s minds that I talk to, whether at work, at home, or travel [sic].  We’re having a jobs summit tomorrow.  I guess better late than never.  Too bad 2,000 pages of health care weren’t 2,000 pages of research to come up with better jobs, because I think that they have the cart in front of the horse…

You know what you need to do about jobs?  You need to empower Americans, small business…I’m a little nervous that we keep bringing these business leaders into the White House and all the relationships with government and TARP.  I don’t know that you get true opinions, I think you get a bunch of yes men, a lot of great headlines.  They know what to do, let them do it.  The government should get out of the way!

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White House Refuses to Stop Using Discredited “Saved and Created” Metric for “Stimulus” Job Creation

Last week, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Oversight & Government Reform Ranking Republican Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden asking that the White House stop using the fictitious and unverifiable metric of jobs “saved or created” when discussing the results of Washington Democrats’ $787-billion “stimulus.”  Today Biden’s office responded, saying that despite embarrassing revelations of fictitious “stimulus” reporting errors and phony jobs numbers, the White House intends to keep on using the discredited and misleading terminology.  The defensively worded letter from the Vice President’s staff can be seen here.

In their letter to the Vice President, dated November 24, 2009, Leader Boehner and Rep. Issa wrote that:

The problematic metric of jobs ‘created or saved’ by the stimulus touted by the Administration has become a distraction from efforts to address the massive unemployment problem facing our country.  Following documented gross inaccuracies and confusion associated with the counting of job claims, we ask that the Administration cease public use of the inaccurate jobs ‘created or saved’ metric and instead focus efforts on lowering the unemployment rate as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

G. Edward DeSeve, the official who “coordinates the day-to-day implementation of the [’stimulus‘],” responded in a letter today to Leader Boehner and Rep. Issa, writing:

There is nothing mysterious, ephemeral or uncertain about the important role the Recovery Act has played in saving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Americans…We believe the direct jobs created and saved measure on Recovery.gov, though subject to revision, will not change dramatically…while the recipient-reported data may be naturally imprecise, the overall confirmation it provides that the Recovery Act is responsible for at least 1 million jobs is irrefutable.

Leader Boehner today issued the following statement, in response to the letter from the Vice President’s office:

The Obama Administration is trying to scam the American people by continuing to repeat their phony ‘stimulus’ claims, including the number of jobs ’saved or created’ - a metric it seems to have made up out of thin air.  As the CBO states on page one of their report, ‘it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.’

The White House claimed that if we passed the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ unemployment would stay below eight percent and jobs would be created ‘immediately.’ Instead, unemployment is over 10 percent, more than three million more Americans are out of work, and Americans are rightfully asking ‘where are the jobs?’ Now, the White House is holding a ‘jobs summit’ while pressing ahead with a job-killing agenda, including a ‘cap and trade’ national energy tax and a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care.

Two months ago, House Republican leaders sent a letter to the President urging him to consider common-sense solutions to help small businesses and put Americans back to work.  These proposals, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups.

To read more about the House Republicans’ better solution, visit GOP.gov/solutions/stimulus.

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Obama Administration Filled With Out-Of-Touch Bureaucrats; Few Have Private Sector Experience

Nick Schulz, over at the American Enterprise Institute’s blog, posted the following chart last week, which illustrates “the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy.”  It’s very revealing, and clearly demonstrates that the Obama Administration has very few officials with private sector experience:

The chart includes “secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security-432 cabinet members in all.” 

The Obama Administration, which designed the nearly $1 trillion “stimulus,” clearly could have used some input from people who have actually created jobs - since the massive spending program hasn’t stemmed the rising unemployment rate, which now stands at 10.2 percent nationally.   What the Obama Administration doesn’t seem to recognize is that more government isn’t the cure all for nation’s woes.  Small business, not government, is the engine of job creation in America - and instead of helping small businesses get back on their feet, President Obama has been working with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to raise their taxes.

Republicans understand that government is often an impediment to job creation, not a “stimulant” of it.  House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) commented today:

As a former small-businessman, I know what it means to meet a payroll, and how out-of-touch Washington Democrats’ agenda – with more taxes, more mandates, and more regulations – is making it harder for employers to create new jobs.

As political satirist P.J. O’Rourke pointed out:

Government is an abstract entity.  It doesn’t produce anything.  It isn’t a business, a factory or a farm.  Government can’t create wealth; only individuals can. All government is able to do is move wealth around. In the name of fairness government can take wealth from those who produce it and give wealth to those who don’t.  But who’s going to be the big Robin Hood?  Who grabs all this stuff and hands it back out?…When government takes wealth from those who produce it, people become less inclined to produce more of it - or more inclined to hide it.  Conversely, when government gives wealth to those who don’t produce it, they too become less productive since they’re already getting what they’d produce in return for not producing it.

In other words, when individuals and small businesses are allowed to keep more of what they earn, they can save, invest, or spend that money as they see fit - all of which are good for the economy and help create jobs. 

The Obama Administration has the audacity to believe that it really can do it all - run car companies, manage the entire financial sector, create jobs by throwing $1 trillion out the window, improve health care by having a massive government takeover of it, and tax energy with impunity.  The modus operandi of this Administration seems to be that one can create wealth by spending money we don’t have and that stimulate the economy by taxing and regulating everything that moves. 

But as Jonah Goldberg noted in today’s Los Angeles Times:

From the stimulus to healthcare reform and cap-and-trade, Washington is now run by people who think they know how to run everything, when in reality they can barely run anything.

If government were a business, it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.  The Obama Administration’s policies are driving America off a fiscal cliff - and the people who are at the helm don’t seem to notice.  Maybe that’s because many of the people running the country have never had a private sector job.

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On the Job Hunt: Independent GAO Says 1 in 10 Jobs “Saved or Created” in the “Stimulus” Don’t Exist

Last night, ABC’s World News Tonight with Charles Gibson highlighted a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on misleading “stimulus” jobs claims.  The GAO report found that “More than 50,000 jobs, or one out of every 10 jobs…came from projects that reported spending no money yet,” according to ABC News.

Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Obama Administration’s “stimulus“, said in an interview with the Boston Globe that: “The agency has made ‘significant referrals’ to the inspectors general of federal agencies.”  But the Globe noted that “Pound declined to provide specifics, and would not comment on whether the money was handed out too quickly, without adequate oversight.  ‘It’s a work in progress,’ he said of the stimulus funding.” 

A work in progress? 

The Boston Globe dug into the “progress” from the “stimulus” in Massachusetts - and here’s what it found:

• $1.5 million to fix a remote lighthouse on uninhabited Monomoy Island, off Cape Cod.
• $123,000 for “security measures” to protect the Spirit of Boston party cruise ship from terrorist attacks. Entertainment Cruises - the company which owns the Spirit of Boston - said: “We feel that we’re really a low threat for a terrorist incident. But the stimulus was a nice perk.”
• $95,000 for the University of Massachusetts at Boston to study pollen samples from the Viking era in Iceland.
• $9 million for a pedestrian bridge connecting parking lots near the New England Patriot’s Stadium.
• “Stimulus” funds to study “circadian clocks of monarch butterflies,” “researching tusks of the Narwhal whale in the Arctic,” and “developing a colony of robotic bees.”
• “Stimulus” money also went to window blinds, photocopiers, a cafeteria dishwasher, taser guns,  a riding lawnmower, and even a freezer for fish sperm.

The Globe did find one job created:

UMass Boston said stimulus money from the National Science Foundation created a job for a graduate assistant to help count pollen grains collected from farms in Iceland and allowed researchers to continue studying the role the arctic environment played in the evolution of civic life during the Viking Age.  

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White House On “Stimulus” Errors: “Who Knows, Man, Who Really Knows”

Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Obama Administration’s “stimulus” website (recovery.gov), dropped a bombshell in interview with the New Orleans Times Picayune, stating that the Obama Administration has no idea how phantom congressional districts - such as Ohio’s 00th or Louisiana’s 26th - received “stimulus” funds.  The Times Picayune story reported:

‘We’re not certifying the accuracy of the information,’ said Pound ….Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers - 26, 45, 14 - to fill in for their congressional district, Pound replied, ‘who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.’

Problems surrounding the Democrats’ $1 trillion “stimulus” aren’t limited to Louisiana.  Last night, ABC News’ World News TONIGHT with Charles Gibson reported on false claims of jobs “saved or created” by the “stimulus” in real congressional districts (as opposed to the phantom congressional districts that we found out about yesterday).

But “stimulus” waste, fraud and abuse isn’t just limited to nine pairs of work boots in Kentucky or phantom congressional districts in Louisiana, as stories in newspapers across America have confirmed:

In Alabama, the Birmingham News reported yesterday that “The Fort Payne Housing Authority this year got a $540,071 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and mistakenly reported in early October that the stimulus grant would create 7,280 jobs,” but, “Actually, the grant to re-roof 154 apartments owned by the authority has created 14 jobs, [Fort Payne Housing Authority Director Pamela E.] Darwin said, adding that someone at the authority meant to type on a federal survey that the grant would create 7,280 hours of work, not jobs.”

In New Jersey, The Record reported on “stimulus” funding for scientific research: “Disclosure reports for NIH and NSF grants filed last month with the federal Web site recovery.gov showed that while UMDNJ netted the most funding, its 89 grants totaling nearly $22 million produced just 71 jobs.  Rutgers reported 50 jobs from 93 grants; Princeton just 22 jobs from 52 grants.”

And In Tennessee, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that “[t]he web site says 9,566 Tennessee jobs were created at the cost of $3.8 billion but, in another section, reports that three jobs were created in Tennessee’s 47th Congressional District at a cost of $2.3 million.  Tennessee has only nine congressional districts.”  The Commercial Appeal also noted that “Recovery.com raises eyebrows with $3.1 million for the Monteagle Diner.”

Any wonder only seven percent of Americans say the “stimulus” has created jobs, according to a recently released CBS News poll?

As House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) commented yesterday:

Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ but all they are getting from out-of-touch Washington Democrats is more spending and more debt piled on our kids and grandkids.  A jobless recovery is not what the American people were promised.

House Republicans have a better solution that will actually create real jobs in America because it recognizes that small business, not government, is the engine of job creation in America.  Last month, House Republican leaders sent a letter to the President urging him to consider common-sense solutions to help small businesses and put Americans back to work. These proposals, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups. The Economic Recovery Solutions Group, led by Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), is also developing additional proposals to spur job creation.

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