Quote:
Originally Posted by bobabode
What credible source do you have as to which solutions didn't work?
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Obama (that is, if he can still be considered credible on this stuff).
The Prez said we needed the stumblebus...er...stimulus to keep unemployment from going over 8%. Even Barney Frank said the Prez was "
dumb" for stating this, but state it he did. The solution didn't work.
The Prez said the stimulus would create immediate impact. There were "shovel ready jobs" that we could get started on right away, or at least that was the promise in 2009. By July 2011, Obama stated that there were no shovel - ready jobs. In fact he even laughed about this, saying "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." The solution didn't work.
President Obama said in February 2009 that the stimulus would lift "2 million Americans from poverty." But since Obama took office, more Americans have fallen into
poverty. The solution didn't work.
What about the promise of all of the "green jobs" funded by stimulus money. The Energy Department has handed out $35.2 billion in stimulus money to jump-start the clean energy industry, but it's created more red ink than green jobs. Nationally, green technology accounts for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and there has been no marked boom in the industry, which is about what it was before Obama took office. Then, of course, there was the taxpayer - financed Solyndra boondoggle. The solution not only didn't work, but it appears to have back-fired.
Obama promised that the stimulus would fund one million electric cars on the road by 2015. Volt sales are lagging expectations, and Fisker Motors product entry remains plagued by issues. Despite a $7500 tax credit for the purchase of such vehicles, Obama's command and control economy types missed the boat on the all important and basic economic equation: supply and (most importantly) demand. Or in this case, the lack of demand. Even the Washington Post suggested that the Prez was "
overly optimistic." I think the Post was being overly polite. The solution didn't work.
EDIT - on a personal note, relative to the "electric cars" and "green jobs", I've personally witnessed 3 "green" businesses scale up and then implode specifically because they were awaiting government loans that never came through. They scaled up on the promise of DOE or DOD grants funded by stimulus dollars, waited patiently and then not so patiently as the agencies strung them along, and then filed for bankruptcy when they could wait no longer. In two cases some of the employees worked unpaid scaling the business down while waiting for an asset sale so that the funds raised by the sale could fund payroll.