Saturday, October 31, 2009

Well Done Washington! Stimulus Package a Hit (to the Taxpayer)

The White House is thrilled to report today that the $787 billion dollar Stimulus Package is responsible for creating or saving 640,239 jobs. Well done Washington! Uh oh. I just did the math...that works out to $1,229,228 and 40 cents a job. Hope those were well paying jobs it created. Yes I know that not all of the money has been spent yet, BUT STILL!!!

Of course it gets worse: Chris Johnston, Director of the Government Efficiency Division of the Indiana state budget office admits that the state can't really say whether the jobs it reported 'saved' would actually have been lost.

I am traveling today, so I don't have the article in front of me, but my fine state of NC used some odd phrase that sounded suspiciously Orwellian about describing the jobs it had 'saved' via the Stimulus Package. (I'll post it when I return).

Leave it to Washington to crow about the success of a failed program, yet still need to embellish the figures in an attempt to make things look brighter.

Meow. Maybe I'm being a tad catty. Obama says his Stimulus Package will create 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

Let's see (in just 61 days,) that works out to a mere $224,857.14 a job. One question: where do I apply?

7 pm Postscript: Jake Tapper of ABC news is doing his job (unlike most of the main stream media): Here's his take on today's announcement. Bad news: turns out I'm a 'Calculator Abuser". I guess I just don't understand Washington math.

1 comment:

  1. I love this line in the story: "Officials pointed out that today’s report did not include jobs saved or created by more than $80 billion in tax cuts..." So tax cuts create jobs? Then let's have more tax cuts!!

    And what button do you push on the calculator to calculate jobs saved? How about if we multiply by the inverse of 1/2 Pi and then divide by the square root of the population of China? That makes about as much sense as any of the numbers they're putting out.

    ReplyDelete