Free Republic

A year after it was passed, it has become painfully obvious to anyone with open eyes that the massive federal “stimulus” – along with several other trillion-dollar government interventions in the free market – has utterly failed to turn around America’s economy. In fact, all this massive infusion of taxpayer cash has done is deprive our consumer-driven private sector of much-needed oxygen, while sending our annual deficits and national debt soaring to previously unthinkable heights. It’s the classic Washington approach to the economy. When times are good, politicians in both parties spend excessively. When times are bad? They spend uncontrollably....

The stock market is falling as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke details plans for dismantling the central bank's economic support measures. Bernanke says in prepared remarks to a House committee Wednesday that the Fed likely will begin tightening credit by raising the interest rate it pays to banks on the money they have deposited at the Fed. That would lead to an increase in borrowing rates for consumers and businesses. The Fed chief cautioned that the central bank is months away before it's ready to boost interest rates.

Of the more than $2 billion the federal government has given out to boost the economy and create green-energy jobs, more than three-quarters has gone to foreign-owned companies that dominate the global wind-power industry. This latest finding by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit at American University in Washington, D.C., is illustrated clearly in San Diego County, where about a dozen commercial wind developers have offices. La Jolla is the headquarters for Eurus Energy America, the subsidiary of a Japanese firm that received $91 million in federal stimulus money for a wind farm in western Texas. It plans to apply...

The Obama administration's economic stimulus program created nearly 600,000 jobs in the final three months of 2009, a figure in line with the administration's goals for job creation through the end of 2010, the White House reported Saturday night. The new total was down from the totals reported for the previous quarter, partly because the administration decided in December to count only the jobs paid for with stimulus funding instead of estimating the number of jobs "created or saved" with the money. Critics had panned the "created or saved" measurement as a subjective and confusing way of determining the program's...

The White House's massive stimulus plan funded 599,108 jobs in the fourth quarter, administration officials said Saturday. The figure, based on about 160,000 reports from state, local and corporate recipients, is the second concrete look at the impact of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. These recipients have been allocated $199.4 billion in spending and received $57.9 billion.

"The other thing I'll point out is we now have...we are working on a...we're told not to call it another stimulus bill. We're calling it a jobs bill. it's similar but smaller and there's a lot of discussion as to what it's best to spend the money on, and I've been pushing for aid to state and local governments. First, because my own state is having such severe problems--and second because from a macro-economic stand-point, we're trying to have jobs now. And construction projects, for example, they talk about them being shovel-ready, but even if you're ready to start building...

WASHINGTON -- Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus bill is going to be even more expensive -- $75 billion more. The new Congressional Budget Office estimate, released Tuesday, provides more ammunition for Republicans who say the stimulus has been long on spending and short on creating promised jobs. The additional cost also eats into the savings forecast from the budget freeze President Barack Obama is expected to propose Wednesday night during his State of the Union address. Almost half of the additional cost, $34 billion, is because the food stamp program won't be able to take advantage of lower-than-expected inflation...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus bill is going to be even more expensive—$75 billion more. That's the finding in a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the costs of the economic stimulus bill, which mixed tax cuts and lots of spending in an effort to jump-start the economy. The reason for the higher estimate of the recovery bill's price tag is chiefly that unemployment benefits are costing more. Plus, stimulus-subsidized bonds to pay for infrastructure projects are more popular than expected with state and local governments. Republicans have long blasted the stimulus for being long on spending...

Washington (CNN) -- Nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday morning also indicates that 63 percent of the public thinks that projects in the plan were included for purely political reasons and will have no economic benefit, with 36 percent saying those projects will benefit the economy. Twenty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say nearly all the money in the stimulus has been wasted, with 24 percent feeling that...

White House brass split on stimulus stats White House advisers appearing on the Sunday talk shows gave three different estimates of how many jobs could be credited to President Obama’s Recovery Act. The discrepancy was pointed out by a Republican official in an email to reporters noting that “Three presidential advisers on three different programs [gave] three different descriptions of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill.” Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more...

Thanks to the ineptitude of Iowa Governor Chet Culver, the state faces a $1 billion budget deficit in the coming year. Last week, Culver delivered his Condition of the State speech and failed to address any concrete ways to solve the crisis. That is because he has no clue how to solve it. Like any good liberal, when in doubt, head to Washington D.C.and beg for more federal taxpayer dollars...

In his weekly radio address on Jan. 10, 2009, Barack Obama said the No. 1 goal of his economic stimulus plan is to create 3 million new jobs in the next two years. Less than 20 percent of them will be government jobs. What exactly, then, will these jobs be? Career Web site Jobfox has analyzed Obama's plan and come up with five areas of likely job growth over the next two years, with 22 specific job titles among them. Engineering, accounting, nursing and information technology will all fare particularly well, Jobfox predicts.

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas won't compete for up to $700 million in federal stimulus money for education because the program "smacks of a federal takeover of our public schools," Republican Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday. The funding is from the U.S. Department of Education's "Race to the Top" program, a $5 billion competitive fund that will award grants to states to improve education quality and results. The program, created in the economic stimulus law, is part of Democratic President Barack Obama's efforts to overhaul the nation's schools. Perry has been critical of the federal stimulus program and the federal bailout...

Economic Recovery: The results are in, and last year's $787 billion stimulus not only failed to do what it was supposed to do, but it has also turned out to be one of the worst investments in economic history. Remember the debate in 2008 over the bailouts then being put together by the Treasury, the Fed and the Democratic Congress? Proponents often raised the possibility that any bailout would make money for taxpayers. Didn't work that way. As we've discovered, the American people aren't just saddled with the ongoing costs of the various and sundry stimulus programs. They're also taking...

As much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars went to 14 zip codes in Virginia that don’t exist or are in other states, Old Dominion Watchdog (http://virginia.watchdog.org) reports. The fake zip codes were listed on Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that is supposed to track how the stimulus money is being used.

As much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars went to 14 zip codes in Virginia that don’t exist or are in other states, Old Dominion Watchdog (http://virginia.watchdog.org) reports. The fake zip codes were listed on Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that is supposed to track how the stimulus money is being used. The phony zip codes are a new wrinkle in Recovery.gov’s increasingly tattered credibility. In November, Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said a rash of phantom congressional districts found on the website were the result of confusion by fund recipients, who...

When President Obama and the Democrats in Congress pushed through their $787 billion stimulus package early last year it was at least remotely possible they really believed it would stimulate the economy and create jobs. But soon after it was rammed through the legislative process the promises of creating jobs became claims of saving them and the 8% unemployment rate the bill was supposed to prevent skyrocketed to over 10%. Now those same Democrats want to squander even more taxpayer money on a phony job-creating bill. continued

The States and the Stimulus How a supposed boon has become a fiscal burden. Remember how $200 billion in federal stimulus cash was supposed to save the states from fiscal calamity? Well, hold on to your paychecks, because a big story of 2010 will be how all that free money has set the states up for an even bigger mess this year and into the future. The combined deficits of the states for 2010 and 2011 could hit $260 billion, according to a survey by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ten states have a deficit, relative to...

Central Pennsylvania school districts received millions of dollars in federal stimulus funding and were advised to use the money for one-time expenses, since it will last for only two years. But with the tight economy, many districts are using the money to fill gaps that otherwise may have had to be handled by cuts or tax increases. In addition to using the money for operating expenses, Harris said many districts are using the funding for small purchases rather than large-scale projects. Though districts were advised by federal officials on how to use the money, they were not restricted in its...

Once-presidential phrase casualty of word war DETROIT – The phrase "shovel ready," incessantly invoked by the Obama administration this year as a way to sell its $787 billion federal stimulus bill, died Thursday. The official cause of death was overuse, according to Lake Superior State University, which announced the phrase's demise in its annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness, released Thursday. "Shovel ready" dug its own grave by forcing its way into speeches and out of the mouths of the president and too many other politicians in past months....