WH Job Summit Results: Spend More Borrowed Money

by McQ | December 8, 2009 11:40 pm

How did I know that would be the inevitable outcome[1]?

President Obama will propose using $200 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to support creating jobs, White House officials confirmed Monday.

The president, in an economic speech before the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, will argue that the money would be well spent by funding projects to build bridges and roads, weatherize homes, and provide other assistance for small businesses as well as the unemployed.

Fund projects to build bridges and roads? I thought that was the purpose of the 787 billion “stimulus”. Shovel ready projects correct? The great and wonderful stimulus, if passed, was guaranteed to keep unemployment at 8% or below, remember? How’s that worked out for us?

And, the funds will come from TARP which was borrowed to begin with. Instead of not spending (and paying back the lenders), we’re now going to create jobs weatherizing homes, oh, and giving “other assistance for small business as well as the unemployed”? It may come as a surprise to the people in Washington DC, but extending unemployment and giving the unemployed other benefits does not create jobs. Nor does some complicated bureaucratic adventure in “weatherizing”.

Initiatives which make the decision to hire and expand easy will do that, and there are none on the horizon. Instead we’ll see another 200 billion added to the 787 billion (yes, friends, a few billion shy of a trillion) on this spending boondoggle that’s worked so well in dampening unemployment.

In case you’ve forgotten (via Patterico[2]), here’s the adjusted projected 10 year Obama budget:

revised deficit

The dark red CBO shows the actual cost, not the sanitized cost from the White House. This is our future in terms of spending. We’ve certainly seen all the excuses for spending at that level due to the financial crisis (reasons I am still not convinced are necessarily valid), but what are the excuses for the years beyond 2010? And where is that money going to come from?

It is hard to deny this isn’t planned deficit spending on a level we’ve never even contemplated before. You have to wonder how any politician of any stripe could see those budget numbers as doing anything other than worsening a bad situation. The question some are beginning to ask is whether or not this future is based on the naive assumption that government can spend its way out of financial crisis or another thing altogether[3].

[Crossposted at QandO[4]]

Endnotes:
  1. the inevitable outcome: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/07/president-obama-to-propose-200-billion-for-jobs-creation/
  2. via Patterico: http://patterico.com/2009/12/06/clowardpiven-and-the-updated-deficit-chart/
  3. another thing altogether: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_clowardpiven_strategy_of_e.html
  4. QandO: http://www.qando.net

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