Congressman
Henry E. Brown, Jr.

200 days after signing the $1 trillion “stimulus,” President Obama and Democrat leaders continue to tout the virtues of a tax, borrow, and spend economic policy while Americans lose their jobs.  Recently, the Department of Labor announced that the August unemployment rate hit a staggering 9.7 percent—the highest level since June of 1983 and the largest one month jump since March.

Unemployment:  In the month of August, there were 14.92 million unemployed individuals looking for work, the highest number in history.  Since February, when the Democrats passed their “stimulus,” 2.46 million people have lost their jobs.

Employment:  The number of employed individuals in August was 139.6 million.  This is the first time that the number of employed people has been below 140 million since 2004.  In the same month last year, there were 145.2 million people working in America.

Under-Employment:  The number of individuals who reported being employed only part-time because of economic reasons was 9 million in August, yet another historic high and 3.2 million more than last year.  The number of people counted as “Marginally Attached to Labor Force”—meaning people who were available and wanted work, but had stopped looking for work in the past four weeks—reached 2.2 million.  All told, the unemployed, under-employed, and those who wanted work but were no longer aggressively looking totaled 26.1 million.

“Stimulus”:  To date, $88.8 billion of the “stimulus” has been spent.  The vast majority of these funds have been spent on Medicaid payments to States, State education payments, and unemployment benefits.  Only $2.3 billion or 0.3 percent has been spent on transportation construction projects, though the President said in February that “400,000 men and women will go to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges.”  Meanwhile, 216,000 men and women lost their jobs in August.

The Rhetoric:  In an effort to justify spending $1 trillion on a failed “stimulus,” Vice President Biden has made a number of public appearances claiming that “the Recovery Act has created or saved between 500,000 to 750,000 jobs.”  The Vice President, however, has not shown what jobs have been saved.  The 2.4 million workers who have lost their jobs since the “stimulus” was signed certainly know what jobs have been lost.

The Bottom Line:  While Americans lose jobs at the fastest rate in a quarter of a century, Democrats continue to spin the results of their “stimulus” and push a government-run takeover of the healthcare system and a national energy tax.  In other words, a 9.7 percent unemployment rate does not appear to be causing Democrats to rethink their job-killing economic policies.

Posted by Brown Staff (09-08-2009, 02:10 PM) filed under Economy

 

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