Fed loan program that gave us Solyndra has created few jobs (update)
One of the center pieces of the Obama administration’s recovery plan has been its green jobs program. It was touted by the President as an investment in the future. And he even managed to snooker Congress into including $38.6 of your dollars in a federal guaranteed loan program in the Stimulus bill – a version, in this case, of the government going into the venture capitalism business.
The results, as they say, are predictable:
A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.
The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.
Half the money is gone and it has created 3,545 “new, permanent jobs”? You do the math – pretty high cost of job creating wouldn’t you say? Oh, and that number is actually down by 1,100 thanks to Solyndra.
So are green jobs, of the type to be found in alternative energy, the best way to approach easing unemployment? Not really, say some experts:
Obama’s efforts to create green jobs are lagging behind expectations at a time of persistently high unemployment. Many economists say that because alternative-energy projects are so expensive and slow to ramp up, they are not the most efficient way to stimulate the economy.
“There are good reasons to create green jobs, but they have more to do with green than with jobs,” Princeton University economics professor and former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder has said.
Which is a nice way of saying this is more about political agendas than putting Americans to work, and unemployment is an excuse, not a reason, for pursuing this agenda. And the cost of that agenda has been pretty prohibitive with no real worthwhile results in the ostensible problem it was supposed help solve – unemployment.
Another example of government using your money to pick winners and losers and everyone coming out poorer in the bargain.
UPDATE: No, I didn’t see Dale’s post. My bad. I’ll leave mine, but now that Dale’s putting up a lot more stuff, I’m going to have to discipline myself to look first before I go popping something up (I use Live Writer, so unless I specifically look at the blog, I don’t see a list of what is up).
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Obama’s “paid for” job’s plan — nothing but tax increases
I know, you’re wondering, how does Obama plan to pay for his $450 billion plus job plan, right. Because in the speech he made the claim this was all going to be “paid for”, remember.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew outlined President Barack Obama’s plan to pay for his $447 billion jobs plan — mostly through tax increases.
Lew said itemized tax deductions and exemptions for those making more than $200,000, and families earning more than $250,000 would be cut — raising about $400 billion to pay for Obama’s jobs plan over 10 years.
A change to bring more hedge fund earnings under normal tax rules as opposed to carried interest rates would raise another $18 billion.
The new tax rules would not take effect until January 2013, Lew said. Obama is not offering any spending cuts to pay for the jobs plan.
The rest of the total would be raised by cutting subsidies for the oil and gas industries to bring in another $40 billion, and change the depreciation rules for corporate jets. All told, Obama would cut $467 billion to pay for his plan.
Lew added that the White House doesn’t anticipate that raising some taxes on high income earners would result in the loss of jobs.
Gotta love it. No politics in this. Nothing happens until January 2013 (how convenient). And the changes will pay for his spending now in 10 years. Wow, where have we heard that before? More debt boosting smoke and mirrors. More of the same old tired agenda.
And of course, we all know that no future Congress is obligated to any of this. And you wonder why there are those of us out here shouting about paying for something now vs the future?
Also, it is a litany of those interests and demographics which reside on the Obama “enemies list”. The rich and the fossil fuel industry. It is the usual class warfare politics. To sell this Obama has to attempt to demonize the rich and the oil companies – even more than he’s done so already. As everyone knows, I’m all for ending subsidies for everyone, but what Obama calls subsides in this case are tax breaks all businesses in all sectors take. They’re not direct subsidies at all (regardless of what the press or the White House choose to call them). This is selective taxation of the type that is meant to be punitive.
So here’s the money part of the great plan. It is absolutely nothing the Republicans have supported before. It should be Dead On Arrival. Obviously, knowing the Republicans won’t support such a funding mechanism, President Obama is not at all interested in a compromise jobs bill. Or bi-partisanship. He’s put a completely unpalatable poison pill in the bill and will now try to paint the GOP as intransigent obstructionists.
And, given the fact that taking those tax breaks away from the oil and gas industry will cost them an extra $40 billion it’s hard not to believe it won’t cost jobs. Note Lew didn’t address that point concerning the removal of the tax break. He’s only claiming that in regards to the so-called “rich”.
Business as usual. Tax and spend. And as usual it is spend now an collect later. Somehow we never get around to the spending cuts, do we? $14 trillion dollars of debt say “no”.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Jobs speech – falsehoods, blame shifting and fantasy (update)
A reasonable summary? How about, ‘”let’s put aside partisan bickering because I need a political boost and spend half of what was spent on the stimulus to do exactly the same thing that hasn’t yet worked.”
As most predicted two things were evident in the speech. A president out of ideas and trying once again to shift blame to Congress. And the fact that he still doesn’t understand that the spending spree is over.
Instead of suggesting a regulatory roll back, or cutting government red tape, or even, horror of horrors, a corporate tax cut, we’re essentially get much of the failed stimulus plan repackaged. The entire purpose of addressing a joint session of Congress (instead of doing the speech from the Oval Office) was to again attempt to establish the House GOP as the bad guys in all of this.
The proposal is simply a redo of the stimulus plan, something Obama has been trying to get Congress to do since the first one failed. Obama proposed a payroll tax cut extension, an extension of unemployment benefits, the creation of an infrastructure bank, a new job training initiative, and providing aid to state and local governments, which have been hard hit by job losses.
The infrastructure bank is somewhat new, but aimed at the same sort of programs at which we previously threw over $800 billion in stimulus money. How did that work out? The payroll tax and unemployment benefit extensions haven’t produced more jobs yet, have they? In fact some argue the continuing extension of unemployment benefits works to the opposite effect. We’ve had job training programs since time immemorial and they too have very little positive effect. The one key point that those who propose such initiatives always seem to miss is there have to be jobs available for such a program to be successful. And finally, pumping money into state and local governments is a very temporary fix. It allows them to keep employed workers who they otherwise couldn’t, at least for a while. But, as they learned with the stimulus funds, once the money ends, so do the jobs. Hardly what one would consider a “jobs program”.
Obama also tried to waive off criticism of cost by claiming his plan was all paid for. AP disputes that:
OBAMA: "Everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything."
THE FACTS: Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional supercommittee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future – the "out years," in legislative jargon – but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use.
Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due. Today’s Congress cannot bind a later one for future spending. A future Congress could simply reverse it.
Currently, roughly all federal taxes and other revenues are consumed in spending on various federal benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, farm subsidies and other social-assistance programs and payments on the national debt. Pretty much everything else is done on credit with borrowed money.
So there is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.
To actually pay for this, the revenue must be diverted from this years budget, not some future year(s) budget. Again smoke and mirrors to sell more spending. Eric Cantor caught all sorts of grief for claiming disaster relief needed to be paid for elsewhere in the budget. That is how you cut and control spending. What Obama has again done is use the old DC jargon that claims something is paid for if they say they plan for it in the future.
That’s simply not acceptable.
Obama challenged the Republicans with a falsehood:
OBAMA: "Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans, including many who sit here tonight."
THE FACTS: Obama’s proposed cut in the Social Security payroll tax does seem likely to garner significant GOP support. But Obama proposes paying for the plan in part with tax increases that have already generated stiff Republican opposition.
For instance, Obama makes a pitch anew to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which he has defined as couples earning over $250,000 a year or individuals over $200,000 a year. Republicans have adamantly blocked what they view as new taxes. As recently as last month, House Republicans refused to go along with any deal to raise the government’s borrowing authority that included new revenues, or taxes.
So, as AP points out, the claim is fraudulent. In fact, there are many things in the proposal that the GOP has been against.
And perhaps the biggest falsehood of the night?
OBAMA: "It will not add to the deficit."
THE FACTS: It’s hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery. Deficits are calculated for individual years. The accumulation of years of deficit spending has produced a national debt headed toward $15 trillion. Perhaps Obama meant to say that, in the long run, his hoped-for programs would not further increase the national debt, not annual deficits.
Perhaps. But then if that was so, he should have said it, shouldn’t he? Instead he played politics.
Probably most interesting was the man who has been driving the lead clown car in the political parade admonishing Congress to “stop the political circus and do something”. It has taken the circus ringmaster 3 years to figure out this is what he should have been focused on from the beginning. And for 2 of those years, he had an all Democratic Congress.
They guy who called for an end to politics has done nothing but played politics throughout this whole ordeal. And now, with his popularity at an all time low, his political future dimming and with him finally turning from his political agenda to that to which he should have been paying full attention from day one, he falls back on one of his favorite political tricks – blame shifting.
What he doesn’t seem to understand is this is all his now. And while the GOP should consider the proposal, it should also be unremitting in pointing out that the proposal isn’t paid for, will add to the deficit and is simply another attempt at a second stimulus throwing money at old programs and ideas which have yet to prove their worth in either improving the economy or increasing jobs.
(UPDATE) If you really want to know how bad the plan is, Krugman liked it:
First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.
Yeah, just like the last one did, huh Paul?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
USPS — a case study in government incompetence
The US Post Office is in deep trouble. Obviously some of the problems can be laid at the feet of the internet which has all but killed routine personal mail in favor of the faster and cheap email. Competition in the area of express delivery and package delivery have taken a ton of business away as well. Private companies like FedEx and UPS can delivery those items more cheaply and reliably than the USPS ever could.
But the biggest problem the USPS faces is its lavish entitlements driven by union demands. And once again, we the tax payers are being warned that unless we toss another 5.5 billion dollars the USPS’s way, its going to go broke. Here’s why:
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
So you have a government agency with declining revenue number …
Mail volume has plummeted with the rise of e-mail, electronic bill-paying and a Web that makes everything from fashion catalogs to news instantly available. The system will handle an estimated 167 billion pieces of mail this fiscal year, down 22 percent from five years ago.
It’s difficult to imagine that trend reversing, and pessimistic projections suggest that volume could plunge to 118 billion pieces by 2020. The law also prevents the post office from raising postage fees faster than inflation.
And overgenerous and rising pension obligations. Sound familiar? The $5.5 billion payment due at the end of September is a payment required to help restructure that pension program. But, as expected, there’s resistance from the union as to the means taken to do so – like cutting the work force:
Cutting the work force is more difficult. The agency’s labor contracts have long guaranteed no layoffs to the vast majority of its workers, and management agreed to a new no layoff-clause in a major union contract last May.
But now, faced with what postal officials call “the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” the agency is asking Congress to enact legislation that would overturn the job protections and let it lay off 120,000 workers in addition to trimming 100,000 jobs through attrition.
Got that folks … the brainacs at the USPS, fully aware of the dire financial straits in which the agency found itself, agreed to a “no lay-off clause” in their new union contract last May. Incredible.
And now that it makes perfect sense to consider layoffs, as well as other measures (no Saturday delivery, closing little used post offices, etc.), that option is one that would literally take an act of Congress:
The post office’s powerful unions are angry and alarmed about the planned layoffs. “We’re going to fight this and we’re going to fight it hard,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 207,000 mail sorters and post office clerks. “It’s illegal for them to abrogate our contract.”
So reach deep fellow taxpayer. Time to bail out yet another failing agency which apparently never saw this revolution in communication coming, was never able to compete in the market without monopoly powers granted by government and has overspent and overpromised even as it watched it’s market share continually shrink.
Maybe it is time to, horror of horrors, consider privatizing this service? Actually, that’s something that should have been done years ago. But watch … we’ll still have this government run anachronism around our fiscal necks when your grandchildren are adults.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Destroying the “taxing the rich is the solution” myth
If you listen to Democrats, all we need to do to solve the debt and deficit problem is to let the Bush era tax rates expire and raise the tax rate on the rich. We’ve had Warren Buffet, among others, saying “hey, tax me more, I can afford it”. And, of course, those standing their ground on principle saying revenue isn’t the problem and tax increases aren’t the solution are roundly condemned for being greedy and protecting the rich.
Well what if we increased the taxes on the rich? What if we increased them dramatically? Is our deficit problem likely to be solved? The answer, of course, is “no”. And here are the numbers:
“Even taking every last penny from every individual making more than $10 million per year would only reduce the nation’s deficit by 12 percent and the debt by 2 percent,” the non-partisan Tax Foundation’s David Logan writes.
“There’s simply not enough wealth in the community of the rich to erase this country’s problems by waving some magic tax wand,” said Logan.
Rest assured you’d only get one shot at all the money as well. The next year the majority of the rich — and that most likely would include Warren Buffet — would find ways to hide their income from such a level of taxation. Human Nature 101.
So 12% of the deficit and 2% of the debt with 100% taxation. Sound like a solution to you? Of course not. How about raising taxes in general, good idea right now?
If you said, “no”, you’re in good company:
The majority of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics believe that the federal deficit should be reduced only or primarily through spending cuts.
The survey out Monday found that 56 percent of the NABE members surveyed felt that way, while 37 percent said they favor equal parts spending cuts and tax increases. The remaining 7 percent believe it should be done only or mostly through tax increases.
Whether the president likes to admit it, we’re in danger of a double-dip recession, and one way to guarantee it is to raise taxes during such an unstable time as now. Obviously if taxes are increased on the rich, it won’t be 100%, so the impact on the debt and deficit are likely to be minimal at best. And it would be an action counter to what economists believe to be the best approach to avoiding a double-dip.
That most likely means that Democrats will continue to pursue such an increase with a single-minded purpose. Or, in short, they still don’t get it — it’s the spending, stupid.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
4 Trillion in debt added under Obama’s term
Deficit spending has risen faster under Barack Obama than any other president in history. That’s not to say other presidents weren’t in the red during their administrations, but in the case of Obama, its over 4 trillion dollars in less than a single term.
The latest posting by the Treasury Department shows the national debt has now increased $4 trillion on President Obama’s watch.
The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion.
It’s the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president.
The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama’s four-year term.
The immediate problem isn’t about taxes or revenues, “it’s the spending, stupid!” Byron York echoes the point:
It’s conventional wisdom in Washington to blame the federal government’s dire financial outlook on runaway entitlement spending. Unless we rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the conventional wisdom goes, the federal government is headed for disaster.
That’s true in the long run. But what is causing massive deficits now? . . . The bottom line is that with baby boomers aging, entitlements will one day be a major budget problem. But today’s deficit crisis is not one of entitlements. It was created by out-of-control spending on everything other than entitlements. The recent debt-ceiling agreement is supposed to put the brakes on that kind of spending, but leaders have so far been maddeningly vague on how they’ll do it.
Precisely. When treating a badly wounded person the immediate need is to stop the bleeding, not treat them for heart disease. Once the bleeding is stopped, then you can worry about their heart and future treatments.
The spending has to stop. And President Obama is not the man to do that. He blames his spending on everyone but himself which indicates to many that he has no intention of slowing it down:
Mr. Obama blames policies inherited from his predecessor’s administration for the soaring debt. He singles out:
- "two wars we didn’t pay for"
- "a prescription drug program for seniors…we didn’t pay for."
- "tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that were not paid for."
While there is some truth to what he points too, the last is nonsense unless you believe the government has first claim to your earnings. Those aren’t tax cuts, they’re tax rates. They’ve been in place for almost 10 years for the first and eight for the second. Tax rates are changed all the time, but until recently they’ve never been referred too as “tax cuts … that were not paid for”. Also not mentioned in Mr. Obama’s litany is TARP – something he voted for – and the trillion dollar stimulus bill, not to mention the new health care law which analysis now shows bends the cost curve up.
Just as this economy is all his, so is the 4 trillion in borrowed money he’s spent during his term to little or no effect during his term. And the budget he submitted to Congress this year, the budget that was rejected 97-0, indicated he still doesn’t understand the spending has to stop.
Our debt now stands at 97.6% of our GDP. That’s default territory. Yet there are those who have attacked Standard and Poors for downgrading their rating to reflect that reality. This is serious business that effects or will effect everyone if it isn’t stopped. GOP candidates need to concentrate on the immediate problem and announce and run on their plan to stop the bleeding.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
The truth about government energy subsidies
The truth, unlike the common wisdom or at least the Democrat narrative, is that far and away the bulk of the $37 billion in government energy subsidies goes to “renewable” energy sources, not evil oil and gas corporations. The $37 billion is $19 billion more than was spent in 2007 in government subsidies, a 50% increase in spending.
It was a feature of the Obama administration’s recent narrative that government was subsidizing rich oil and gas companies and that should stop. Never mentioned, of course, were where other subsidies were going. For example:
Of that $19 billion increase, additional subsidies for renewables amounted to more than $9 billion, a 186 percent increase. Subsidies for renewables now total $14.7 billion.
Wind power was the biggest recipient of federal energy dollars. Last year, this sector took in almost $5 billion in subsidies – a more-than-tenfold increase from 2007. Meanwhile, solar energy subsidies increased six times over the same period, from $179 million to $1.13 billion. And biofuels (think ethanol) saw a jump from $4 billion to $6.6 billion.
Any idea what we’ve bought for that money?
Take wind power. Today, it represents a paltry 1.2 percent of total domestic energy production. Yes, that’s up from 0.5 percent in 2007. But only after spending billions in taxpayer resources.
What’s more, wind power is expected to fall well short of some key growth goals set by the Obama administration. The Department of Energy has officially declared it wants 20 percent of the energy market comprised of wind by 2030.
Currently, there are about 40,000 wind megawatts online in America. Meeting the Department’s target on time would require creating 13,000 new megawatts of wind energy every year — twice the growth notched by the industry last year, which was an all-time high. And warnings of a major contraction ahead have already been sounded by the American Wind Energy Association.
A classic example of government trying to pick winners and losers, or, in more succinct terms distorting the market. Instead of letting the market decide what is viable, government hopes to force it. And, predictably, the results are not good.
As for the evil oil and gas companies. Well the Democrats try to sell them as the ones sucking down all the subsidy dollars and not paying their “fair share”. The truth, of course, is almost the opposite:
Plenty of politicians, mostly Democrats, have advertised that eradicating federal dollars for oil and natural gas as a budget panacea.
The EIA [Energy Information Administration – part of DOE] study shows that these critics have fingered the wrong energies. Researchers report that last year, oil, natural gas, and coal received a total of 11 percent of all federal energy subsidies. And most of those oil and natural gas “subsidies” are typical deductions, deferrals, and credits that all businesses take.
In fact, as a share of net income, the oil and gas industry paid 41.1 percent in federal income taxes last year, compared to 26.5 percent for all non-oil and gas S&P 500 manufacturing companies. Meanwhile, oil and gas account for 78 percent of domestic energy production and are responsible for more than 9.2 million American jobs.
The myths, however, continue to persist. On sector promises jobs and a new source of energy and is essentially a subsidy sink hole. The other accounts for over 9 million jobs and actually provides the vast bulk of energy the country uses. Guess which one is constantly under fire from the left?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
China launches first aircraft carrier
While all the drama of the debt ceiling negotiations and downgrade were happening, China quietly launched their first aircraft carrier.
So what does that mean in the big scheme of things? Well IBD lays out the big point as clearly as anyone can:
It is not yet a full-fledged fighting ship. Its mission is to gain experience in carrier operations, particularly for pilots unaccustomed to taking off from and landing on a carrier’s moving deck.
Yet it represents a sea change in potential capability and something that Congress’ bipartisan fiscal supercommittee should ponder as draconian defense cuts remain on the table.
The first is no mean trick. Learning carrier operations and training carrier pilots takes a while. But the second point – about the supercommittee and defense cuts – should be lost on no one. One of the critical points about cuts to spending is the differentiation between good cuts, that is cuts that trim away fat and waste, and bad cuts, cuts that remove muscle and bone.
But back to the carrier and China’s intentions. First a few facts:
A few weeks ago Chinese Su-27 fighters intercepted a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft that had taken off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa as part of a routine surveillance program of China. And Beijing issued a warning that such surveillance near its shores will not long be tolerated.
China’s capabilities have taken a quantum leap since a Chinese J-8 jet collided with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance jet in April 2001 off Hainan, the island that now has a base for Chinese ballistic missile and attack submarines.
China in recent years has laid claims to Japan’s Senkaku Islands, the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and has conducted at least nine incursions into Philippines-claimed territory.
China is flexing. No question in anyone’s mind that it is feeling its oats and will be challenging the status quo in the South China Sea. It consider that to be China’s “blue soil”. Add to the facts above that China has been reported to have developed an aircraft carrier killer missile and is in the beginning phases of developing a 5th generation fighter, and you have to begin to wonder if all of that points to benign intent.
Beijing’s goal is to secure the waters from Japan’s home islands, along the Ryukyu chain, through Taiwan and to the Strait of Malacca, encompassing the South China Sea.
Chinese government writings refer to the waters surrounding China as blue soil. Where governments used to draw a line in the sand, Beijing is preparing to draw a line in what other governments view as international waters.
Last week, the state newspaper People’s Daily warned of "dire consequences" if Beijing is challenged in the South China Sea.
The People’s Daily is, of course, an organ of the ruling Communist Party in China and nothing hits its pages unless approved at the highest level.
Aircraft carriers are offensive weapons, not defensive weapons. Their purpose for existence is to project power. The carrier China just launched will not be their last or only carrier. The question is, what does China intend to do with it?
IBD concludes with the current situation and the future worry:
We will be hard-pressed to meet the emerging Chinese threat when our Navy has only 286 ships (down 45% from 1991, when it had 529) and continues to shrink.
We’ve closed the F-22 Raptor production lines, and even some in the Tea Party are insisting on defense cuts to make up for our spending follies.
Defense is a constitutional imperative, not an optional budget item. We’d better pay attention to that Chinese carrier.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Still not getting it – - Democratic Rep to introduce “Progressive” jobs bill
It might come as a surprise to some, but the bill Democrat Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL) plans to introduce as a jobs bill is long on borrowing money we don’t have and funneling that money through ineffective government programs. Apparently they still don’t get it.
The member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus would spend $227 billion dollars and, best case, create 2.2 million jobs (or, again best case, a little over $108,000 a dollar a job). Her plan reads like something from the Franklin Roosevelt administration:
Under her plan, the following policies would be implemented:
- The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.
- The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act. Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands including the restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.
- The Student Jobs Corps would create 250,000 more part-time work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.
- The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 new teachers, 40,000 new police officers and 12,000 new firefighters.
- The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.
- The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.
- The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do needed work in communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.
Perusing the list, there’s absolutely no possible threat of waste, fraud and abuse, is there? 750,000 people hired to “work in the community” doing “recycling” and “rural conservation?” “Weatherization”? Nope, no chance of waste, fraud and abuse, none at all.
Of course, nowhere in there other than initially, is there any mechanism to fund the “jobs” created in the future. They’d last as long as the $227 billion did and then the jobs would go away. That would include the teachers, police officers and firefighters. Those are simply in the plan to make it sound more acceptable. If the localities who will get the teachers, police and firefighters funded by this boondoggle can’t afford to hire them now, chances are very good they won’t be able to keep them when the money runs out.
The jobs listed are also mostly make work jobs on make work projects that might be nice to have done, but aren’t going to contribute to the private economy (the actual engine of the economy) in any meaningful way. Nothing is really “produced”, no wealth is created, no revenue – other than salaries – is taxable.
And finally, which health care providers is “Health Corps” going to hire? There’s a shortage of health care providers in the private market. Why in the world would they leave that to work for government in “underserved rural and urban areas?”
It is clear with Rep. Schakowsky’s proposal that the Progressive side of the aisle still don’t get it. How much louder do the American people have to shout to be heard?
Cut spending. Make government smaller. Make government less costly.
Rep. Schakowsky and the Progressives are still stuck in the 20th century. We’re already living the Raw Deal thanks to spendthrifts like her.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Congrats on the debt deal–for the first time US debt is greater than GDP
Yes, we’ve finally done it – and almost immediately after the Spender-in-Chief signed the new law:
US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government’s debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.
Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country’s spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.
The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.
Public debt subject to the official debt limit — a slightly tighter definition — was $14.53 trillion as of the end of Tuesday, rising from the previous official cap of $14.29 trillion a day earlier.
Treasury had used extraordinary measures to hold under the $14.29 trillion cap since reaching it on May 16, while politicians battled over it and over addressing the country’s bloating deficit.
The official limit was hiked $400 billion on Tuesday and will be increased in stages over the next 18 months.
No linger time there, huh? We now owe more than we produce in a year. And let’s be honest, we didn’t get here just during the last 3 years – although we did switch from a horse-drawn sled to a rocket sled – this has been a long process aided and abetted by both parties. Yes, one has been worse than the others at times, but it pays to remember that George W. Bush gave us Medicare part D and No Child Left Behind … both horribly expensive programs.
But it’s not slowing down is it? And that’s a problem for economic recovery as Dale reminded us:
…a body of peer-reviewed work has been developed (PDF) that shows that an excess of government debt serves as a drag on the economy, shaving at least a full percentage point off of annual GDP growth. And we’ve learned that this negative economic effect has a non-linear effect on economic growth as debt increases.
There seems to be little real recognition of how drastic and the enduring government cuts in spending must be to change this so the debt isn’t a drag on the economy. Granted they must be intelligent so as not to compromise our national security or disrupt what we deem as basic essential services government provides, but that leaves one heck of a lot of the pie to cut. And that would include massive cuts in entitlements. You’re not entitled to something someone else can’t afford. And that’s where we are. I wish we’d quit calling those programs which are pure welfare “entitlements”. There is a difference between paying into something for years and a program in which recipients are getting something for nothing. It is the “getting something for nothing” programs that deserve a first hard look. Unfortunately the programs in which taxpayers were forced to contribute and were subsequently looted by spendthrift politicians need to be reviewed and cut as well.
We can pretend this isn’t a real problem, like most of the politicians in Washington DC, or we can face the reality (and pain) of the situation and start to work doing what is necessary to bring fiscal sanity to our nation’s finances.
A good start would be cleaning the lot of them out DC and starting over. You’re likely to find at least as competent a group as are up there now by randomly picking 535 names from a phone book. Yes, I know that’s not going to happen, but we’ve got to come up with some way to scare those people straight. Suggestions are welcome.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO