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RUSH: This is CBS this morning and the co-respondent is Bill Plante. We had the fifth anniversary of the stimulus yesterday. We're in the midst of an absolutely devastated United States economy. There is no end in sight. We are also in the midst of the total wrecking of the American healthcare system. We are in the process of tearing it apart and rebuilding it all under government control eventually. No matter where you look, the jobs market, the economy, any Obama policy, no matter where you look, there is utter disaster. In fact, polling data out there, Washington Examiner,...

As told by Democrats, the stimulus law is a tale of officials using government effectively to shield families from a severe economic crisis triggered by inadequately regulated speculation. In that accounting, the law is a prime example of how a strong central government can help the average person. To Republicans, by contrast, the law provides proof that government spending does little other than to burden future generations with debt. Given the continued weakness in the economy, Republicans have the simpler case to make: Good times have not yet returned, therefore, Obama’s policies have failed. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrated the...

In the heat of a re-election campaign, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s press office issued a strong statement today condemning the 5-year anniversary of President Obama signing the Democrat-led stimulus package into law. Yet Cornyn was one of two senators — both Republicans — who were absent when the measure first went before the Senate in 2009. “Five years later, our economy is still sluggish, Americans are dropping out of the workforce by the thousands, and the President’s latest big government experiment, Obamacare, is now on track to slash 2 million more jobs from the workforce,” wrote Cornyn about the American...

When the $787 billion federal stimulus was signed into law exactly five years ago this Monday, the U.S. economy was losing almost 800,000 jobs per month. Now? More than 4.2 million jobs have been added since March 2009. Also at this time five years ago, the unemployment rate was 8.3% and would climb to a high of 10.0% just months later. Now it stands at 6.6%. But on this fifth anniversary of the stimulus – passed mostly along party lines in response to financial crisis and Great Recession – Democrats and the White House have responded so far with …...

Five years ago Monday, President Barack Obama visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, his $800 billion stimulus bill. At the time, the U.S. economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month. In the fourth quarter of 2008, it had contracted at an 8% annual rate, a Depression-level free fall. “Today does not mark the end of our economic problems,” Obama said on Feb. 17, 2009. “But it does mark the beginning of the end.” And so it did. The stimulus quickly became a national joke, mocked by the right as a...

Texas Republican Sen. Jon Cornyn -- head of the GOP's Senatorial committee -- has been an outspoken critic of Democratic stimulus efforts, but he chose to skip tonight's cloture vote on the package without offering a detailed explanation. Cornyn was the only no-show -- except for Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg, who recused himself. So where was Cornyn? "He had a long standing commitment and since it was cloture vote and no vote is like a "no" vote, he stuck to it," wrote spokesman Kevin McLaughlin in an E-Mail to Politico. "Obviously [he] is against [it] and will vote no...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, February 16, 2014, 10:38 PM     In November 2010, Vice President Joe Biden said fraud and abuse of the stimulus bill had been kept “to a surprisingly low level.” This came a year after Barack Obama bestowed VP Joe Biden with the title of the stimulus “sheriff.” Barack Obama signs the failed stimulus into law in 2009.Fast forward five years – Investigators have proven 1,268 cases of fraud in the $840 billion stimulus program.USA Today reported: Despite thousands of fraud cases, the financial losses under the 2009 Recovery Act have been just...

The other night I attended a Republican meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington D.C. A candidate for Senator was speaking and I wanted to hear what he had to say. His name is Ed Gillespie and he has been a volunteer and elected leader in the Republican party for 30 years. I won't bore you with his party platform policies or a description of his well polished demeanor and dress. Let me just assure you he looked and sounded the part. But he said something that made me question him and the Republican party. He alluded to Obama...

On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama promised the sun and the moon and the stars. That was the day, five years ago, when he signed the $800 billion "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." President Modesty called it "the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history." He promised "unprecedented transparency and accountability." He claimed the spending would lift "two million Americans from poverty." Ready for the reality smackdown? The actual cost of the $800 billion pork-laden stimulus has ballooned to nearly $2 trillion. At the time of the law's signing, the unemployment rate hovered near 8 percent. Obama's egghead economists...

Last week, our nation’s genius Vice President Joe Biden offered a statement which alienated some of his most loyal fans. “If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2:00 in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said ‘where do you think you are,’ they’d say, ‘this must be America, it’s a modern airport,’” Biden said during a speech on infrastructure in Philadelphia. Mr. Biden had a point, though not for the reason he thinks. The Vice President believes that the Government is not spending enough money on infrastructure projects like airports, bridges and highways. If that is...

...Biden also had this to say on the subject of why America has the world’s largest economy. “No, I’m not joking!” he added. “Why did we lead the world economically for so long? We had the most modern infrastructure in the world.” Biden implies that we no longer lead the world economically, which isn’t true. It’s not even close to true. The US economy is still the world’s largest by far, nearly double the size of China’s economy and more than three times third-place Japan’s. Several US states, including California, Texas and New York, would rank above most national economies...

Retiring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was replaced by Janet Yellen as of today, is leaving the Federal Reserve with an unprecedented $4,102,138,000,000 in total assets on its balance sheet, up 391 percent from the $834,663,000,000 in total assets the Fed showed on its balance sheet when Bernanke took over as chairman in February 2006. Much of the increase in the Fed’s assets has come in the form of U.S. Treasury securities and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities that the Fed purchased over the last five years in its attempts to stimulate the economy. …

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Newport Beach in California. Steve, I'm glad you called, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Rush, good to be here, love listening to your show, and again your comments this morning regarding the unions and the -- RUSH: Money laundering. CALLER: Exactly. That's the term I was looking for, the money laundering. It's exactly what's going on out here in California with the bullet train. The politicians in California, all the Democrats have given all of the public employee unions their payback, but they've got a problem. All of the private sector...

How can we ever expect America's younger generations to preserve America's greatness when the president of this nation keeps preaching damaging economic myths and misguided moral lessons? It's one thing for our elected representatives to express compassion for those facing difficult financial circumstances. It's another for them to elevate the receipt of unemployment benefits and other forms of government dependency programs to a virtue. And it's yet another for them to justify these wrongheaded policies with false claims that they actually improve conditions when they make them worse. President Obama's policies of expanding the government and his practice of punishing...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and the S&P 500 closed at all-time highs on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced a small reduction in its stimulus program, confirming that the U.S. economy was on firm footing.

President Obama regularly touts what he calls the “economic recovery” supposedly prompted by his policies, including the creation of 7.5 million jobs, consistent growth for more than three years and revitalization of the domestic auto industry. He recently told ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, for example, that during the Great Recession of 2008, “we came in, stabilized the situation. The banking system works. It is giving loans to companies who can get credit. And so we have seen, I think undoubtedly, progress across the board.” It’s an upbeat talking point for the president, but the problem is most Americans...

President Obama has presided over a terrible jobs market. Unemployment is more than two-percentage points higher today than the White House claimed it would be if the so-called stimulus was enacted. Even more worrisome, the employment-population ratio seems to have permanently fallen, which is bad news for economic performance since our output is a function of how much capital and labor is being productively utilized. So what’s the response from the Obama Administration? Well, they want to further subsidize people for not working. I’m not joking. Here’s some of what has been reported by the Huffington Post. The Obama administration...

Many believe that the current administration – or perhaps more broadly, the current Democratic regime, by the triumvirate Obama, Pelosi, and Reid since the 2006 elections – will be remembered and condemned for its “unforced errors”… that is, for the unnecessary mistakes it has made, through mishandling programs and clumsily creating needless trouble by misreading economic cause-and-effect or societal trends. But were they truly errors at all? Were they mistakes? Much of the damage done by this administration has in fact been intentional – either out of some arrogant belief that “we elites know better than you do” or out...

A Colorado-based solar company that got hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees before going belly-up didn't just empty taxpayers' wallets - it left behind a toxic mess of carcinogens, broken glass and contaminated water, according to a new report. The Abound Solar plant, which got $400 million in federal loan guarantees in 2010, when the Obama administration sought to use stimulus funds to promote green energy, filed for bankruptcy two years later. Now its Longmont, Colo., facility sits unoccupied, its 37,000 square feet littered with hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water. The Northern Colorado Business Report...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve extended its support for a slowing U.S. economy on Wednesday, sounding a bit less optimistic about growth and saying it will keep buying $85 billion in bonds per month for the time being. In announcing the widely expected decision, Fed officials nodded to weaker economic prospects due in part to a fiscal fight in Washington that shuttered much of the government for 16 days earlier this month. The Fed indicated the recovery in housing had lost some steam, while noting some reversal in a recent spike in borrowing costs. "Available data suggest that household...