The Heritage Foundation

The Morning Bell

FRIDAY, NOV 6, 2009

10% Unemployment Shows Objective Failure of Obama Stimulus

Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind.

And since that report was issued, a once compliant press has filed story after story tearing the credibility of the Obama administration’s job creation claims to shreds. Just enter the words “stimulus”, “jobs”, and “report” in a Google News search and these are just some of the headlines you will receive:

Stimulus Job Report Filled With Errors

Stimulus Watch: Salary raises counted as saved jobs

White House Tally Appears to Overstate Stimulus Jobs

Reports Show Conflicting Number of Jobs Attributed to Stimulus Money

Stimulus Watchdog: job counters confused, need guidance

Why stimulus jobs aren’t here to stay

Many California jobs ’saved’ by stimulus funds weren’t in jeopardy

Luckily the American people do not need to count on phony new jobs studies to provide the objective data necessary to hold President Barack Obama accountable for his economic policies. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s. When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs.

Today, BLS released its monthly jobs report and the numbers speak for themselves. The economy shed another 190,000 jobs in October, bringing the number of jobs lost since Obama was sworn in to 3.8 million. Worse still, the unemployment rate rose from 9.8% to 10.2% percent. With only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

The Obama stimulus failed because it was based on faulty Keynesian beliefs. Heritage fellow J.D. Foster explains:

The Keynesian stimulus theory fails for the simple reason that it is only half a theory. It correctly describes how deficit spending can raise the level of demand in part of the economy, and ignores how government borrowing to finance deficit spending automatically reduces demand elsewhere.

Fortunately, the economy’s natural recuperative powers may be ending the recession. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at 3.5%. But if this recovery is going to include job growth along with GDP growth, then job killing initiatives like Obamacare and cap and trade will have to be abandoned.