Posted on 02/17/2010 3:16:45 PM PST by reaganaut1
WASHINGTON President Obama defended his year-old economic recovery package on Wednesday, arguing that the package, the major legislative achievement of his presidency so far, has created or saved as many as two million new jobs, lowered taxes for 95 percent of Americans and spared the country a potentially disastrous depression.
One year to the day that he signed the bill into law, Mr. Obama appeared at the White House alongside small business owners who have benefited from the measure, which has become a kind of political albatross for him and for fellow Democrats seeking re-election in 2010.
One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second depression is no longer a possibility, the president said. Its one of the main reasons the economy has gone from shrinking to by about 6 percent to growing about 6 percent.
He added, Our work is far from over, but we have rescued this economy from the worst of this crisis.
Mr. Obamas appearance was part of an intensive effort by the White House to sell Americans on the virtues of the stimulus bill. This week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., cabinet secretaries and other administration officials are fanning out to 35 communities across the country, where they are talking up the measure and announcing new programs, like the one unveiled by Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood on Wednesday to pay for 50 new projects.
The $787 billion stimulus bill, a package of tax cuts and public-works spending that is formally named the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has sparked debate about whether it has actually helped the economy. Surveys show that many Americans do not have a clear understanding of what the bill has done; often, it is confused with the bank bailout.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
HUGE LIE.
TARP was touted to save us from the second despression and it's been largely paid back.
Stimulus promised unemployment would not rise above 8%.
It's failed.
It is so sucessful that MSNBC has replace The Tingler and Schultz with Lesbian Ice Hockey for better ratings.
And he has help from the congress folks as well. Someone mentioned earlier an email from Arlen Specter, and further down the Latest Articles, there are comments by Nancy Pelosi. All of them trying to tell us how the stimuus either saved or created jobs. You know, this is all in preparation for the next “stimulus” which I’m sure they will try to ram down our throats. Guess they think if they repeat this lie often enough, it will become true.
This is largely due to the fact that they do have a clear idea of what it has not done.
Stimilus is now well into the mid-800 billion range, the 787 billion is old.
They passed unemployment extension stuff in the original bill and let’s just say the economy’s been doing so good, they underestimated how many unemployed people would be using it, and were off by about 100 billion.
Successful all right, like the Detroit Lions are a successful football team because they showed up for all the games.
No matter how much Jack Squat and his goon followers want to paint, re-shape, and perfume the BS....it will always remain BS.
Stimulus produced “Jack Squat.”
No need to push if the stimulus wasa success!? I think we would see the positive results no?
All lies!
I do support the new Governors in NJ/VA and a new Senator in MA, even though people directly lost their jobs in the same offices, thanks to O.
This is not surprising at all. What else does he have to hang his hat on with 20% unemployment?
I live in a very red confirmed state and I see absolutely nothing in the way of any stimulus, the only thing that has been introduced is a week effort of an additional UI amount.
I have literally an ear to the ground because I manage a concrete batch plant in Alaska and there is nothing on the horizon, we are not even seeing any implementation of new hire taxation breaks, nothing, nada, zilch.
I had an employee meeting the other day with our greatly reduced workforce and told them we are going to have to very very careful, no more lapse in quality control, no more wasting of materials, expect to be asked to perform job duties that usually lesser paid employees would do of which we won’t hire.
The best thing for this country would be an immediate replacement of our highest elected official with someone that actually has a plan and listens to what ails the average citizen.
YOU LIE! Oh, wait, this is obama. Lies from obama are not surprising. It'd be surprising if he told the truth. I thought obama had already been taken to the woodshed over the "created or saved" BS. He really is a slow learner. The government can track job creation, but it has absolutely no way to measure jobs "saved." So any time and every time you hear "created or saved" you know the speaker is reporting pure fantasy. obama, lying again, naturally. (there's a song in there somewhere)
Also, I have to say, this represents yet another example of fuzzy thinking and poor use of the language by the liberals. Tell me, just how do you "create or save" a so-called "new" job? You may be able to create jobs, but you cannot save them. The whole sentence is poorly constructed. It is as if the liberals are in such a frenzy to get their message out there, created! saved! new! jobs! pant pant pant... They can't even think straight or put together a cohesive message. These are the people we've entrusted to run our Country? God help us.
...lowered taxes for 95 percent of Americans and spared the country a potentially disastrous depression....
YOU LIE! Oh, yeah, it's obama, lying again. What tax cut. Did the tax rates change? No. Is there a "refund" yes. But note that the government is "spending" money it does not have. So we're all going to have to pay this back (with interest) at some point to bail out the government.
I live in western New York. I am, coincidentally, a concrete contractor. One of my indicators is how busy we are during the winter. Construction costs are higher in the winter (you have to heat and protect materials like concrete, you have to maintain heat in a building during construction, etc). In a robust economy, builders accept these added costs in order to get a jump on the building processs. In a down economy, everyone waits until spring. No one worries that there will be a waiting list for sub-contractors. Right now, construction is dead.
They can't win this. They should just shut up... instead of reminding everybody that (a) they passed that boondoggle, and (b) now they're trying to lie about it. Hardly anyone knows anyone who actually got a job as a result of the 'stimulus.' It cannot be otherwise. Even if they did "create or save" 2 million jobs, the vast majority of those were of the 'saved' variety where the person never knew they were in danger of getting laid off anyway. The vast majority of those are government workers, who are not the people that Obama has to convince of anything: they love the guy. Let's say that of the two million (if there even were that many), perhaps 500,000 were actually new-never-saw-'em-before jobs. That many jobs doesn't go very far when you have ten million unemployed. For everyone who says "Yeah, I got a job out of the stimulus," there are nineteen unemployed who haven't seen diddly and ninety million more who are employed but haven't seen diddly either. So here's the Obama propaganda machine and its Ministry of Truth in the media telling the public something that perhaps 500,000 people out of a hundred million will believe. All the rest are listening to this going, "Who does he think he's kidding?" This "propaganda offensive" may be the end of Obama's presidency. Once people write him off as somebody who tries to con the public, he's done. |
To be fair, lesbians pucking in public has been known to create quite a stir... ;-P
Yeah, good luck with that whole positive spin thing. All I know is that in 2006 I was employed. I finished grad school in late 2008 and cannot find a job to save my life. He can read that teleprompter like he never has before but this country is filled with people who have lost their jobs and houses, and don’t really care how many jobs were saved because they still can’t find one. The whole “what have you done for me lately” mentality applies to Democrats now as much as it applied to Repubs in 2008. So good luck with that Dr. Utopia.
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