Stats available at www.recovery.gov indicate that NY Congressional District 17, where I reside, received $236,010,354 in grants and contracts from the American Recovery Act, and it produced a reported 110.26 jobs. A quick math tells me this is $2,026,332 per job.

A total of 550,620 jobs were reported by primary recipients of Recovery Act loans, grants and awards to have been saved or created by the $267.63 billion already handed out by the Recovery Act. This amounts to $486,067 per job.

Democrats Eliot Engel represents NY-17.

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The following piece was accepted by and posted at American Thinker Blog.

As it became more undeniable in recent weeks that Obama’s Stimulus Economy is a spectacular failure, Liberals went into spin gear claiming that if only the Stimulus was larger, if only it was $1.2 trillion as Ms. Christina Romer wanted, things would have been great.

It may sell for a talking-point, but let’s look at three points:

1) Until recently, Dems pointed out how “worse” things could have been if not for the Stimulus – despite the fact that the Stimulus promised great times, not “could have been worse” times. Regardless, the Stimulus – according to the Left – was a success because things could have been worse. Therefore one would wonder, why the need for the recent spin?

2) If the initial $800 billion Stimulus gave us despair (during the first twelve Stimulus months, we lost way more jobs than the amount lost in the twelve months leading up to the Obama/Dems win in November 2008), why should we think that increasing the Stimulus by 50% would have given us a flourishing economy?

3) The Stimulus was indeed more than $1 trillion! If you add up all the “jobs bills” that the Dems passed and pushed through since the original Stimulus (and if you also add up the additional in-budget spending that the Dems gave us under the name of “fixing the economy”), you easily pass the $1.2 trillion mark. This little fact renders as junk the spin that if only we had a $1.2 trillion Stimulus, all would have been great. 

As always, facts don’t matter to some when it gets in the way of their agenda and ideology…

A vast majority of people surveyed recently believe that the economy, eighteen months after the Stimulus, is still in a very poor shape.

Indeed, with an Unemployment Rate double than before Dems took control of Congress; the private sector economy – according to official BLS data – losing a net three million jobs since the Stimulus; the Stock Market in retreat; Home foreclosures expected to surpass the 2009 record, and federal deficits nine times larger than the last Republican deficit (less than $170 billion in FY 2007), few would think that the economy is doing anything but bad.

To counter this negative view that Americans have on the economy, Dems have a list of talking-points to prove unemployed and frustrated Americans how wrong they are.

Here are the excuses, depending on the economic news of the day:

First, the economy is still bad because it’s Bush’s fault. Secondly, things are actually getting better, but could have been much worse if not for the stimulus. Third, this economy is booming, as we in fact “created and saved more jobs than originally thought” (as Congressman Eliot Engel of NY – against whom I am working – claimed in a recent Press Release). Besides, if not for Republicans – VP Biden claims – we would have had a larger Stimulus, which would have given us by now a good economy.

I just wonder how Dems shamelessly keep selling these conflicting talking points every other day, thinking that Americans are really THAT stupid! But what else would you expect from a Party who asked for the head of a Congressman – Joe Barton – who in a poor word-choosing suggested that the Rule of Law be followed in times of crisis, just days after one of their own House members was seen physically hitting a teenage boy, yet had no problem with that one.

This article also appeared this morning at The American Thinker Blog

As you know, Mark Penn’s firm received $5.9 million Stimulus money for doing PR work on the Stimulus bill.

Sounds clean. Right? Well no. Penn was for a while the lead PR guy for Secretary of State Clinton’s presidential campaign, but a bill totaling $5.4 million was never paid to him. Until of course, Penn’s firm got approximately the same amount for doing “P.R. work” on the stimulus.

The cronyism of the Bush team could not have gone away faster. Right? The good news is that the Penn pay of $5.9 officially saved 3 jobs at Penn’s firm. Now I really feel good.

Those who know stats of the US job market are aware of the bitter fact that during the eight years of President George W. Bush, the economy gained only 2.58 million jobs. The main reasons for these bleak numbers are the recessionary, job-losing economy Bush inherited from President Clinton, and the weak economy that Bush had in his last twelve months in office.

This was the thinking until now.

But a new complimentary way of counting jobs shows, that during President Bush’s tenure, the economy actually gained 12.9 million jobs, which GWB says is the credit of his tax cuts. The new model was designed by Chicago economist Barack H. Obama who calls his new system “Jobs Saved or Created.” This model calculates minimum x5 to the positive side the numbers produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official job-counting body of the US Government.

For example: According to the BLS, the US economy lost a total of 2.61 million jobs from March of ’09 through September ’09. Using the Obama model, these numbers mean that the economy actually gained or prevented from losing minimum 640,000 jobs, or perhaps even up to 1 million jobs. Based on this calculation, one should conclude that the BLS stats showing Bush’s economy gaining only 2.5 million jobs, likely has “created or saved” minimum 12.9 million jobs.

Economist Obama says that creating Congressional districts; claiming a pay raise as a job saved; and producing numbers out of thin air, are all welcome ways to use the Jobs Created or Saved system.

Fans of President Clinton are now petitioning the BLS that the current figures that show the economy gaining 22 million jobs during President Clinton’s era should be revised to a gain of minimum 100 million jobs.

Today, the Labor Department reported that 190,000 jobs were lost in October, worse than the 150,000 consensus in a Market Watch survey of economists. The Unemployment rate hit 10.2%, up from 9.8% a month ago, and much worse than what was expected.

Politically speaking, those on the Left will say that the current jobs report is better than in January when “we lost 700,000 a month.” I wrote already once that this excuse is lame, and the claim is false altogether. Besides, rest assure that those who lost their jobs this month don’t care for a dime how many more or less people lost jobs in this same month.

Those on the Right knew all along that the disasters job market is here to stay, and to get worse than what it was a while ago. On May 15, three months after the signing of the stimulus; a time when people were seeing “green shoots” and expecting wonders from Obama’s Stimulus; a time when the unemployment rate was at 8.9%; a time when Fed Chief Bernanke said that the unemployment rate won’t hit the 10% mark, and two months before Buffet warned of an 11% Unemployment Rate, I wrote the following on lohud.com (the article has been pulled since then):

“Sure, these and other statistics are “better” than November’s numbers, yet November and the immediate months after it were “depression era,” hardly an index against which to one would want to measure “better” times. Add to that the disastrous lagging indicator (jobs) that can itself destroy the economy. This leads me to conclude that for regular people on the street, though economic times have yet to reach full scale, and an unemployment rate of more than 11 percent might be here before we get to count the next twelve months.”

I know we are not close to 11 percent; however we are not yet at May ’10 either. Frankly, I was surprised that the Unemployment Rate didn’t crack the 10% figure two-three months ago, considering that so many things in the economy are still very bad. Yes, they are portrayed as “good” just on the basis that it’s not as bad as a year ago. But as I wrote in May, November of 2009 is hardly an era that you want to measure success against it.

As long Obama’s economy does not show a net gain on a monthly basis, and as long the unemployment rate doesn’t cool off, a spin of “saving or creating” jobs will, politically fall on death ears, and will economically keep the recovery down.

I will not delve into endless statistics or explanations why I believe it is working. I will just point to one thing, and you decide if you agree.

The only thing, besides the stock market, that saw strong improvements in the past half year, is the housing industry. No, not the full real estate market got better, but only the housing industry has now better days. Their improvements (through constant positive statistics) are actually fueling partially the market rally, and are expected to play a major role in a better economic growth (GDP) report due out tomorrow.

Credited by every objective economist for this housing improvement, are two things. 1) Cheap home prices. 2) The $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers that was placed into the Stimulus Bill after requested so by Republicans. This gives for Conservatives and Republicans two major points, economically and politically.

Economically: we see once again that tax cuts work, and work very well. In fact, from the whole stupid stimulus package, it appears that the homebuyer’s tax cuts are the only thing that had swift and strong positive results, thus helping to heal the economy in general.

Politically: I think the Republicans need to get/take credit for this considering that it was their idea, and they need to point out that they wanted an even more robust and wide-ranging homebuyers tax credit plan than what the Dems actually agreed to place into the stimulus.

Everyone in politics knows the phrase that was coined in ‘992 by James Carvil, the political mastermind of then-Arkansas Governor and presidential candidates Bill Clinton: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” This meant to say to voters, ‘don’t get distracted by other issues. The economy is the problem now, so vote in Clinton for President.’

This phrase 17 years later is still relevant from a political and economic perspective, becouse when debating these days Reaganomics, the Left points to the weakened economy of under Bush the First, and when debating “political strategies” some point to that “”masterful” phrase which “propelled Clinton into the White House.” Both, however, are the longest-standing economic and political myths that I have ever seen.

Consider some facts:

A)  In March of ‘991, the U.S. economy was officially out of recession. In English it means, that nineteen months before Clinton won the election, the economy (GDP) was actually growing again, following a very short and light recession.

B)  You can claim that the GDP growth at the time didn’t translate into prosperity to people. Well, first, at least the economy was growing; it wasn’t in a recession as some try to believe until today. Secondly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which in the current Stimulus Economy is a gage for success or failure, grew from a recession low of 2,398 in the week of October ‘990, to a high of 3,398 in the week of June first 1992. (The Dow didn’t have a disasters fallback as we had starting last year September, so it was not shooting radically upwards like we experience in recent months, nut it had a healthy growth).

C)  Seeing that the GDP and the Dow are not friendly to this “economy stupid” myth, you will turn to jobs. “Jobs growth is what counts in a REAL recovery.” Fine, let’s count jobs: In the last six months of Bush’s ‘992, the economy gained on a monthly average 129,000 jobs, and in the first half of ‘993, the monthly average was 208,000. Considering that jobs are a “lagging indicator,” meaning they lag the rest of the economy, it is fair to say that the healthy job growth (plus the declining Unemployment Rate) of the second half of ‘992 and the robust job growth of early ‘993, reflected a turned-around, BOOMING economy that started months before Team Clinton had its election night plans ready. While I am at it, get this: the last six months of Clinton’s ’00, the economy gained a poor monthly average of 100K, and the following half year the economy lost 73,000 jobs on a monthly basis, which confirms again that GW Bush inherited a recession, whereas Bill Clinton inherited a booming economy.

D)  Politically speaking, Bill Clinton won a poor 43% of the popular vote in ‘992, one of the weakest showings for an outside candidate, yet he still won the election, due to a third party candidate – Ross Perot running to the Right of Bush – picking up 18% of the popular vote, leaving Bush with just 37% of the vote. In other words, Carvil’s phrase resonated with only a small portion of the population, as we see that Clinton got  only 43% of the vote, of which a big chunk were African Americans who regularly vote 9-10 for Presidential Democrats, regardless the state of general affairs.

Obama and the Democrats credit the recent “better” job market to the Stimulus bill, but defend the-still-weak job market by saying that jobs are a “lagging indicator,” it lags the rest of the economy when it comes to improvements, therefore the Stimulus does not yet fully reflect in the job market.

The Problem is this: February, the month the stimulus was signed and before any stimulus money was dished out, the economy lost 60,000 jobs less than in January, and in March the economy lost even less jobs than in February. If the “logging indicator” excuse is true, why did the economy in March, the month stimulus money merely started rolling out, lose less jobs than it did in each of the two months before it? The March improvement cannot be attributed to the stimulus considering jobs are a lagging indicator. Right? It takes time for the Stimulus to reflect in the market.

Whichever way you will cook it, you are toast: if you use “lagging” as a factor, how/why did we get the March improvements? You will certainly have to agree that some (or most) of it happened on its own (just as February certainly did happen on its own, because February was before the Stimulus). If so, how much of the general improved job markets since then took place on its own, independent of Obama? Yet if you will say “logging” is not a factor and the better March number IS a direct result of the stimulus, why is the job market now, seven months into the Stimulus, still not doing better than it was in the months before the panic started last year September?

The answer is simple: the Stimulus failed to produce the job wonders Obama and the Dems assured us back in February. Did the panic that lasted from September 2008 through February 2009 subside? Is the job market now less bad than it was 10 months ago? Yes to both. But it is more from “natural causes” such as people getting over the shock waves of the Lehman collapse and the Medoff scheme (both of which generated the panic in the first place), than the Stimulus actually fueling a better economy. Heck, the New Orleans waters back in ’05 after Katrina receded before the Bush team took any action. Why? Because there is this much havoc that panic causes before things get less bad on its own. The same is with the job market: it started getting less bad on its own, back in February when it lost with 60,000 less than in January, before any Stimulus was spent, and is still less bad mainly on its own rather than the stimulus doing what it promised to do.