Boehner, Republicans Sick the Dogs on the Obama Stimulus Package
By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Republicans are going to the dogs.
With unemployment now at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio released a new video today (embedded below) poking fun at the Obama administration's claim that the stimulus package the president and congressional Democrats rushed into law earlier this year is creating jobs.
In the video, a job-sniffing bloodhound named "Ellie Mae" is shown on the trail of the stimulus, searching the country for the millions of jobs the Obama administration said its trillion-dollar spending bill would create.
"This is a lighthearted web video, but the underlying point is no laughing matter," Boehner said. "At a time when Americans are looking to Washington for leadership, the trillion-dollar 'stimulus' isn't working.
Americans were promised the 'stimulus' would keep the unemployment rate from going above eight percent. It's now at 9.5 percent, and rising. Where are the jobs?" Boehner asked.
One place Ellie Mae isn't shown looking—but where Boehner may want to send her—is the travel and tourism industry, including bellhops and airport baggage handlers. It seems that congressional spending on overseas travel has nearly tripled since 2001, according to a report appearing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. The paper's analysis of 60,000 travel records found that hundreds of lawmakers spent nearly $13 million on overseas trips in 2008, "a 50 percent jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago."
The cost of congressional delegation tours and fact-finding missions, also called "codels," has risen nearly 70 percent since 2005, the paper reported. That's a lot of tips—but probably not a lot of jobs.
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Reader Comments
OBAMANOMICS
I see more Bush bashing, the Left needs to let that go we are 7 months into the debacle that is this administration, the Dems are mad with power & the Repubs as a whole won't take a stand.. I see new jobs the the Obama Kingdom, soon we will be like Iran a supreme cleric with the mullahs underneath them then hundreds of others hand picked by the mullahs THEN the "government"
Boehner has done evrything he can to keep it from working
Anyone with half a brain (I guess Boehner may qualify) can go out to the website called recovery.gov. It shows how much of the Stimulus Package has been spent.
The stimulus package is fine - it however has only had $54 billion spent so far (last time I looked). Much of that went to unemployment benefits, healthcare coverage for unemployed, and a few other departments. Much of the rest of it has not yet been spent. It takes time to receive, evaluate and award contracts, then for contractors to begin projects.
Also - the Republicans stripped out the infrastructure projects that would have created more jobs...so they can buy themselves mirrors if they are looking for someone to blame. It just means that we'll have to get another bill for infrastructure in a while.
The Right delayed those projects that would have really benefitted the unemployed. That plus the Bush economic disaster of 2004-2008 should be a reminder to Americans that the Right wants Obama to fail so much, they are willing to sacrifice America's recovery - and your standard of living.
Unemployment was at 4% only because we were fabricating liquidity with hot air and credit based on nothing. People were spending money they didn't have, living in houses they couldn't afford, buying cars and everything else on longer and longer credit terms, and Bush was taking tax revenues badly needed and sending it back to people to superheat the economy even more.
Capitalism is a great machine - it will force a correction eventually. That's what we are seeing now - a correction of huge excess. The hot air bubble that burst will cost us 15% of GDP - perhaps permanently. That automatically translates to around 12-15% unemployment during the adjustment, and 8-10% perhaps for decades.Obama never said 4% - he said he would maintain a certain number of jobs - which he has - that would have been lost without government asistance.
Boehner is a big talker with no solutions - He wants to go back to what made this mess in the first place??????
We followed Bush off the edge of the cliff into the Iraq war, ridicuous tax rebates and huge weapons systems that threw our budget surplus into a huge defiti. What did Boehner say during that time? Boehner said not a peep in 2006 and 2007 when it was well known that we were nose-diving into a recession (remember discussions during the campaign in early 2007 about not using the "r" word (recession?))
Boehner was no leader then - and can hardly be given credence now. It will take years before the economy is really right again. Obama is just trying to clean up Boehner's smelly socks...
MSM? I would love a definintion.
As far as I can tell, "MSM" is whatever news organization conservatives don't like. NY Times, Wash. Post, CNN, NBC, etc, all appear to be defined as MSM. Fox, WSJ, Limbaugh, etc are not defined as MSM. Are you saying that they are not mainstream? It can not be their audience size since Fox and Limbaugh are always bragging about how they are killing the competition.
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