Obama’s stimulus fantasy

Here we go again. We have heard countless statements and assertions from the White House over the past 17 months that the Stimulus Bill passed in February of last year is working. It’s time for the White House to stop this rhetorical fantasy and focus on the fact that its policies--Stimulus included--have failed to create jobs for out of work Americans.

Yesterday President Obama was in Michigan touting his Stimulus bill, but people across the state (and the rest of the country) don't need to look much further than the unemployment lines to see that the stimulus has failed miserably.  Whatever employment numbers Obama’s economic team may cook up or whatever photo-ops his staff sets up, the cold, hard facts remain: Obama Democrats want credit for “saving or creating” imaginary jobs because they don’t want to take responsibility for the real jobs they’ve lost.

So for the President and his job czars, here is a little dose of reality: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that since the passage of the stimulus bill, 2.3 million Americans have lost their jobs. While the President assured us the unemployment rate would not rise above 8 percent with the stimulus, it currently stands at 9.5%, and Michigan has the second worst rate in the country at 13.6%. Even the President’s best rhetorical flourishes can’t “change” numbers like these. It’s not surprising then to see Obama’s Democrat colleagues in Washington abandoning him in droves on his economic policies.

Coincidentally, so are the American people. In a revealing CBS News Poll released this week, 82% of Americans would rate the condition of the economy as bad. In that same poll, only 23% think the stimulus helped versus 74% who believe it had no impact or made things worse. Perhaps most telling of all is the fact that only 13% of Americans believe the President’s economic policies have helped them personally.

Business leaders around the country are also voicing their strong displeasure with the Administration’s anti-business policies. Mort Zuckerman, media mogul and owner of the New York Daily News, went on MSNBC last week to say, “[I]t is without question, the most hostile Administration to business and to the role of business that we’ve had in decades.” CEOs across the board have expressed their concern that Obama’s policies will “cause sustained damage” to the economy that will hurt the “long-term health of the country.”

It is clear that the President and Washington Democrats are bad for the health of our economy. While they have made their anti-business agenda resoundingly clear, the Republican Party offers a better way forward. With bottom-up, small business-focused policies that spur economic growth, we can work toward emerging from this recession and moving Main Street forward together.

Cross-posted from http://www.gop.com/index.php/chairman_steele/comments/obamas_stimulus_fantasy