Stimul-Them

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” Thomas Jefferson

Among the many civic lessons Americans either never learn or quickly forget is that Congress is responsible for the budget, not the White House. The Democrat party has controlled Congress since January 2007, controlling the budget process for FY 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed President Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In other words, Obama inherited a deficit he voted for and then voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20, 2009.

Not long after that, Congress passed The Stimulus Plan in February 2009. They promised the $787 billion economic stimulus package would jumpstart economic growth, and save between 900,000 and 2.3 million jobs. The economic stimulus bill allocated funds as follows:

• $288 billion in tax cuts.
• $224 billion in extended unemployment benefits, education and health care.
• $275 billion for job creation using federal contracts, grants and loans.

Although the economic stimulus package was to be spent over ten years, the bulk was budgeted for the first three fiscal years: $185 billion in 2009, $400 billion in 2010 and $135 billion in 2011.

The Plan’s proponents bragged that by October 30, 2009, over $241.9 billion had been spent: $92.8 billion in tax relief, $86.5 billion in unemployment and other benefits and $62.6 billion in job creation grants. By October 8, 2010, the program had spent $554.4 billion: $243.4 billion in tax relief, $163.2 billion in entitlements and $147.8 billion in contracts, grants or loans. However, the graph below shows what really happened:

The size of the federal government grew by 10 percent. By the end of 2009, there was a minor loss in jobs, one-tenth of one percent, in local government. By July of this year, it had gone down to nine-tenths of one percent. State government jobs only began to show a minor decline in the Spring of 2010 and by July, the loss of jobs was one-tenth of one percent.

Meanwhile, the private sector suffered – and continues to suffer – a job loss almost in direct proportion to the growth of government jobs. It was actually a little above a ten percent increase in the Spring, but dropped slightly by summer. These government jobs are jobs and labor unions which our taxes must support.

The official number of unemployed workers in the United States is 14,671,614. The actual number, which includes those who’ve given up looking for work is 27,002,026. The U.S. has a work force of 139,676,621. But the number of U.S. Income Taxpayers is 110,181,609. That’s roughly 29 million people who don’t even make enough money to pay income tax and that number will increase as the economy tanks further.

Another 20 million of those who are employed are government workers whom are taxes are used to keep employed to say nothing of the 44 million food stamp employees. Private sector employment improved slightly this spring after having fallen to seven percent. And if the boasts of the Stimulus proponents are right, those jobs were only created on the backs of the remaining taxpayers or created out of Monopoly money.

Those who are on the fence can dither about social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and global warming (whose remedies will put the finish on our economy). But you can’t argue with the bottom line. And the bottom line is getting lower and lower.