PA Blog

WRONG FROM THE START: TOP 10 OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS TRILLION-DOLLAR STIMULUS

WASHINGTON DEMS HEAD INTO TOMORROW’S “JOBS SUMMIT” WITH A SERIOUS CREDIBILITY PROBLEM December 2, 2009 | House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) | Permalink

The White House will convene a “jobs summit” tomorrow against a backdrop of rising unemployment, soaring debt, and declining public confidence in the Obama Administration’s economic program.  Washington Democrats staked their credibility on a nearly trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that was supposed to be about putting people back to work, but has instead produced countless examples of wasteful government spending while more than three million Americans have lost their jobs.  Even the accounting methods designed to keep track of ‘stimulus’ dollars have been widely discredited.  Given the last 11 months of outrageous ‘stimulus’ claims, the American people are right to wonder whether Washington Democrats can be trusted to create jobs and cut the deficit:

1. UNEMPLOYMENT “AT EIGHT PERCENT OR BELOW”

CLAIM: “Just 10 days before taking office, Obama’s top economic advisers [Christina Romer & Jared Bernstein] released a report predicting unemployment would remain at eight percent or below through this year if an economic stimulus plan won congressional approval.” (Associated Press, 6/14/09)

FACT: The nation’s unemployment rate now stands at 10.2 percent.  The President and several members of his economic team explicitly stated that the ‘stimulus’ was needed to avert double-digit unemployment.

2. IMPACT FELT “IMMEDIATELY”

CLAIM: “Q: If the president gets his way and gets this package approved, he signs it into law, how soon before — the American public starts to feel results, the creation of jobs?  NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR LAWRENCE SUMMERS: You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately.” (CNN, 2/9/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy has lost more than three million jobs since the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ became law.  One House Democrat this week referred to the ‘stimulus’ as the “jobless American Recovery Act.”  A recent survey found that fewer than one in ten Americans believe the ‘stimulus’ has helped create jobs.

3. “90 PERCENT … PRIVATE SECTOR”

CLAIM: “More than 90 percent of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector.” –President Obama (News conference, 2/9/09)

FACT: “Although President Obama initially said that 90 percent of the jobs created by the stimulus program would be in the private sector, the data suggests that well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector.” (The New York Times, 11/4/09)

4. “NO EARMARKS OR PET PROJECTS”

CLAIM: “There will be no earmarks or pet projects in this bill.” –House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Floor statement, 2/13/09)

FACT: The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has produced countless examples of wasteful government spending, including repairs to a bridge that reportedly carries about 260 cars per day, many to a place called Rusty’s Backwater Saloon in Wisconsin, and in North Carolina, where ‘stimulus’ funds were reportedly used by one town to hire a new worker whose job is to apply for more ‘stimulus’ funds from Washington.

5. “A VERY FISCALLY SOUND PACKAGE”

CLAIM: “We must make sure the public understands this is a very fiscally sound package.” –Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Talk Radio News Service, 3/10/09)

FACT: With the help of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus,’ the Obama Administration spent more in its first 100 days than all previous presidents have combined.  The national debt has topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.  The federal government is now operating on a budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten.

6. “A LOT MORE JOBS CREATED”

CLAIM: “The second hundred days you’re going to see a lot more jobs created.” –Vice President Joe Biden (ABC’s This Week, 7/5/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy lost roughly 930,000 jobs in June, July, and August.  It was during this period that the President proclaimed he could “see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

7. “A LOT MORE AMMUNITION LEFT”

CLAIM: “There is a lot more ammunition left in the stimulus package.” –Jared Bernstein, the Vice President’s chief economist (CNNMoney.com, 10/30/09)

FACT: “The government’s economic stimulus spending has already had its biggest impact and probably won’t contribute to significant growth next year, a top White House adviser said Thursday.” (Associated Press, 10/22/09)  “An interesting tidbit from Dr. Christina Romer’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee.  Citing economic analysts she says the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009. (Editor’s note – those quarters are now behind us).” (ABC News, 10/22/09)

8. MORE WORK, NOT MORE JOBS

CLAIM: “I think we got the Recovery Act right. … It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” –National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers (The Washington Post, 11/8/09)

FACT: The Obama Administration’s attempt to suddenly make job creation seem like a lesser goal of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ flies in the face of numerous public statements made in the days before the bill was passed, including the President’s statement that creating jobs was his “bottom-line number one.”

9. RAISES SAVE JOBS

CLAIM: “If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job.” –Department of Health and Human Services spokesman (Associated Press, 11/4/09)

FACT: This is one of several attempts by the Obama Administration to define a job “saved or created” by the ‘stimulus.’  In this particular case, the AP found “more than 9,300 existing employees in more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.”  In a newly released report, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

10. “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN WASTEFUL SPENDING”

CLAIM: “We’ve been in business seven, eight months. You haven’t seen wasteful spending. No one has said we spent $2 million on things that didn’t exist.” –Vice President Joe Biden (The Daily Show, 11/17/09)

FACT: “Stimulus jobs reported in non-existent congressional districts. … Of all the problems found in the latest round of stimulus reporting, add another one: congressional districts that don’t exist.  ABC News reported yesterday that White House officials have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/18/09)  “The reports on jobs created or saved by the $787 billion economic stimulus package are ‘riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions,’ the federal watchdog overseeing the spending acknowledged Thursday.” (USA TODAY, 11/19/09)

BONUS. REPUBLICAN SOLUTIONS

CLAIM: “Vice President Biden offered an impassioned defense of the Obama administration’s policies on the economy, health care, and energy this morning… He chastised administration opponents for not offering alternatives to solve the problems of the nation.” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/23/09)

FACT: “House Republicans Press Obama on Job Creation.  House Republicans sent a letter to President Barack Obama today, pushing the administration to seek more business tax breaks as a way to boost the number of new jobs. … Republicans say in their letter that they’re hoping to work with the White House toward a bipartisan jobs plan.” (WSJ Washington Wire, 10/7/09)  The proposals contained in the October letter, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups.  Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), who heads up the Economic Recovery Solutions Group, will discuss additional proposals to spur job creation in a speech today at the Heritage Foundation.

Republicans have a much better plan
By John Boehner
November 4, 2009

By now, the American people have made it crystal clear to Washington that what they want out of healthcare reform is a plan focused on reducing costs, not growing government.

Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Democratic leaders ignored Americans’ concerns and wrote a bill that would implement a government takeover of healthcare that actually increases costs and adds to our already skyrocketing debt.

Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare bill represents 1,990 pages of bureaucracy designed to centralize healthcare decision making in Washington, D.C., at the expense of patients and doctors. It will require tens of thousands of new federal employees.

It will create dozens of boards, bureaus and commissions in charge of coming up with new regulations and red tape that will inevitably make healthcare in this country more expensive.

Indeed, Speaker Pelosi’s bill will lead to higher health insurance premiums and impose new burdens on taxpayers from all walks of life and the nation as a whole.

Even though President Obama declared to Congress that the cost of healthcare reform would not exceed $900 billion over the next decade, Speaker Pelosi’s bill clocks in at more than $1 trillion — and counting.

The final price tag is sure to be higher as we continue to discover the bill’s hidden costs.

There is nothing secret, however, about the fact that Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare bill would raise taxes on working families. This applies even to those making less than $250,000, despite President Obama’s repeated pledges to the contrary.

Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare bill also delivers a crushing blow to small businesses in the form of burdensome mandates that will kill the jobs needed to get our economy back on track.

If that weren’t enough, Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare bill also calls for drastic Medicare cuts, leaving seniors with reduced benefits and fewer choices.
This will especially hurt those on Medicare Advantage, a successful program that nearly one million Floridians rely on.

In short, Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990-page government takeover of healthcare fails to fix what’s broken and undermines what works.

There is a better way. Republicans unveiled a plan in June that makes healthcare more affordable and accessible at a price our nation can afford. These are four smart, fiscally responsible reforms Republicans would implement right now to lower costs:

• Let individuals and families purchase health insurance across state lines;
• Allow individuals and small businesses to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do;
• Give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower healthcare costs;
• End junk lawsuits that contribute to higher healthcare costs by increasing the number of tests and procedures that physicians sometimes order not because they think it’s good medicine, but because they are afraid of being sued.

Visit http://healthcare.gop.gov to learn more about the Republican plan to lower healthcare costs.

We now have a choice: We can work together to implement smart, fiscally responsible reforms that improve Americans’ healthcare or we can recklessly pursue this partisan government takeover that creates far more problems than it solves.

It’s clear where the American people stand. They’re frustrated and fed up.

The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ isn’t working.

Unemployment is rising.

The debt to be paid by our kids and grandkids is exploding.

And now comes Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990-page government takeover of healthcare.

We simply cannot afford another Washington program that overspends and underdelivers.

Republicans will continue to stand on principle and fight for our better solutions to make healthcare more affordable and accessible for American families.

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, is the Republican minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Opposing view: ‘We learned our lesson’

Republicans offer better solutions and a path to fiscal sanity.

By John Boehner

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

As I’ve stated before, Republicans lost our way on fiscal responsibility when we held the majority in Congress. Since then, we have held firm to our commitment to show the American people we learned our lesson by offering better solutions to hold the line on spending, rein in red ink and get the nation’s fiscal house in order.

We offered an alternative economic recovery plan that, according to a formula used by one of President Obama’s senior economic advisers, would have created twice the jobs at half the cost of the Democrats’ trillion dollar “stimulus.” We developed a budget that keeps spending under control without raising taxes by instituting a spending freeze for five years, exempting defense and veterans’ benefits.

In stark contrast, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have gone on a spending spree the likes of which our nation has never seen.

In fact, the federal government ran up a budget deficit of $1.4 trillion during the past fiscal year, more than triple the size of the previous record high. This level of reckless spending is unfathomable to out-of-work families struggling to make ends meet, but it has become the status quo for out-of-touch Washington Democrats.

What’s worse, this spending binge hasn’t produced the jobs this administration promised. The “stimulus” has failed to keep unemployment from rising to near 10%, and roughly 3 million private sector jobs have been lost since it became law. Families are rightfully asking: “Where are the jobs?”

Now, even while operating on a budget that doubles the debt in five years and triples it in 10, Democrats are proposing a new round of spending — and borrowing — to make up for the “stimulus” that isn’t working. This is on top of a trillion dollar government takeover of health care, a cap-and-trade national energy tax and other costly initiatives passed this year.

By continuing to spend money we don’t have, Democrats are making matters worse for our economy, not better. It’s time to start working together to ensure the American people have a government that lives within its means.

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, is the House minority leader.