What do you call a jobs bill that begets no jobs ?

[dogtowner]

an opinion piece but she makes valid points

When President Barack Obama “pivoted” to jobs a few months back (from what, the White House didn’t say), he said he was going to take his plan to rebuild the U.S. economy directly to the American people.
It’s a good thing, too, because Congress isn’t interested. Obama’s $447 billion American Jobs Act of 2011 was never going to see the light of day in the Republican-controlled House. The Senate gave it the thumbs-down this week, voting 50-49 to block the bill, well shy of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. Even some of the Democrats who voted to bring the bill to the floor said they would have voted no on the bill itself.
That doesn’t mean it’s dead. Obama has vowed to continue pushing his jobs package, with its temporary tax cuts and hiring incentives for small business, extended unemployment benefits and money for public works projects. The Senate now plans to take up selected provisions of the bill.
We can only hope they pick and choose wisely. Some measures, such as the “bridge to work” program, seem reasonable. People receiving unemployment benefits could spend up to eight weeks as unpaid trainees working for eligible employers, learning new skills and enhancing their job prospects.
But the bill includes a lot of short-term incentives that wouldn’t encourage hiring, anti-discrimination protections for unemployed workers that wouldn’t get them rehired, trade restrictions that would raise the cost of infrastructure projects, and a decade of new taxes to pay for all the new spending.
Significant Shortcomings

As for the president’s contention that his bill is “fully paid for,” with the spending front-loaded and the tax increases deferred until after 2013, it sure sounds like another case of government betting on the come.
What do you call a jobs bill that professes to create jobs when in fact it wouldn’t have much of a real-world effect? Here are some adjectives that come to mind.

you'll have to click the link above for it...

 

[Openmind]

34 days ago

Fact Check: Did the stimulus create "zero" jobs?

Posted by
CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) - The Statement: Texas Gov. Rick Perry said at Monday's CNN/Tea Party Debate that President Obama "had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs. Four-hundred-plus billion in this package, and I can do the math on that one. Half of zero jobs is going to be zero jobs."

The Facts: A more accurate jobs count may come from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill, "increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million" in the second quarter of 2010 alone. The budget office also states that well over half a million jobs were funded in each of the other three quarters of 2010.

 

[dogtowner]

34 days ago

Fact Check: Did the stimulus create "zero" jobs?

Posted by
CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) - The Statement: Texas Gov. Rick Perry said at Monday's CNN/Tea Party Debate that President Obama "had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs. Four-hundred-plus billion in this package, and I can do the math on that one. Half of zero jobs is going to be zero jobs."

The Facts: A more accurate jobs count may come from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill, "increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million" in the second quarter of 2010 alone. The budget office also states that well over half a million jobs were funded in each of the other three quarters of 2010.

Problem 1: "Which estimates". Hardly proof. And what was this based upon ? If its CBO then its multipliers and not hard fact. Making a causal effect argument requires more.

Problem 2: "Jobs were funded". Then they were not jobs created but contracted government temp labor.

Fact is, its impossible to say how many or few but we can say with certainty that it failed the metric that its proponents set, it failed to keep unemployment under 8.5%.

At the end of the day Porkulus was a demonstrated failure so any assumption that more of the same will behave differently is simply unfounded.