Westmoreland: No Celebrating on Stimulus Birthday
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2/17/10 One year ago today, President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus bill into law with great hype and big promises, but the facts show that after 365 days, we have more debt, lots of wasteful spending, funding for a liberal wish list but no new jobs. In fact, the cost has risen $75 billion to $862 billion because unemployment benefits had to rise to pay for people who lost jobs that the bill was supposed to save. “President Obama and the Democratic Congress said the
stimulus would stem the tide of unemployment ‘almost
immediately,’ but instead we’ve seen a continued deterioration
of the job market while we’ve piled up hundreds of billions of
dollars in new debt,” U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said. “We know
there’s been a lot of spending, but where are the jobs? The
administration had a tough job in defending all this deficit
spending that we can’t afford to pay back, but it’s that much
harder for them when the country lost an additional 3 million
jobs AFTER the stimulus.” When the stimulus passed, the nation’s unemployment rate was
7.6 percent. The administration stated this massive new spending
would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. It quickly
soared above 10 percent – and it’s actually higher than that if
you include the many millions of Americans who have simply given
up looking for the time being. In Georgia, the unemployment went
from 9.2 percent before the stimulus to 10.3 percent at the end
of 2009. “All of this money was deficit spending,” Westmoreland said.
“We’ll be paying the interest on this for years – taking
hundreds of billions a year away from future priorities and
future needs and emergencies. We’ve worsened our fiscal crisis,
and adding insult to injury we haven’t gotten much in return for
it. “As a nation, we have spent our way into a lot of trouble. A
brighter future depends on less government, less spending and
less debt so that we can free our small businesses to create the
jobs we need.” |
State & National Politics |
