United Liberty

My apologies for posting so much about polls the last few days, but much of what is coming out is showing voters’ contempt for much of what has come out of since President Barack Obama took off last year.

Last year during the Obama Administration’s push for a Keynesian-style “stimulus” package, Americans were told that unemployment would not rise above 8% with the stimulus and would surpass 9% without it (see page 5 of the administration’s report, The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Program).

Unemployment is 10% today and jobs are still being lost, so it’s no wonder Americans believe the “stimulus” bill was a bad idea:

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Sunday say they oppose the stimulus package, with 42 percent supporting it.

Last March, just weeks after the stimulus bill was signed into law by President Barack Obama, a CNN poll indicated that 54 percent of the public supported the program, with 44 percent opposed.

The program, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, attempts to stimulate the country’s economy by increasing federal government spending and cutting taxes at a total cost to the government of $787 billion. No Republicans in the House and only three in the Senate voted in favor of the bill.

Earlier this month the Associated Press reported that spending on transportation had no measurable impact on the economy, noting “spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter.”

There were voices warning against this. Two hundred economists, including Nobel laureates, took out a full page ad in the New York Times warning that deficit spending would not spur economic growth. Congress and the Obama Administration did not listen. How are they going to respond to last year’s failure? They’re already pushing a second stimulus, of course they are describing it as a “jobs” bill.

Taxpayers should be skeptical as the administration drives us further into debt, ironically pushing a deficit commission at the same time.

Debt does not create wealth, it just adds to the burden future taxpayers will bear.