Freedom Line Blog

Ah, the world of Democratic fiscal policy.  If you pass three massive stimulus bills that not only fail to stimulate job growth, but partly contribute to 10.2% unemployment, why not go back to the well and push for tax hikes?

According to the Hill, Democrats are seeking a $150 billion tax on the sale and purchase of financial instruments like stocks and derivatives.  The thinking is that since Wall Street is finally recovering and unemployment is still lingering above 10 percent that Wall Street needs to involuntarily fund a “Job Creation Reserve” for the unemployed.  If that’s all it takes to lift a $14 trillion economy out of recession, why didn’t our exalted class of politicos think of this before?

Now that Wall Street is starting to recover, what better way to welcome it back to prosperity than with a massive new tax hike?  This failed line of thinking reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan quote, “If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

For real life illustrations of this quote see: Wall Street bailouts/new taxes, taxing “rich people,” bailing out Detroit, subsidizing Amtrak, subsidizing the postal service, subsidizing agriculture, and the regulation of pretty much every productive economic venture in the U.S.

Boy, those fictitious Stimulus jobs just keep piling up.

Yesterday, we highlighted an analysis done by David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway of The Washington Examiner, which points out that at least 75,343 jobs the Obama Administration claims have been “created or saved” by “Stimulus” funds are bogus.

Now, Jonathan Karl with ABC News reports that at least some of those jobs “saved or created” are in Congressional districts that don’t even exist.  Karl writes:

Here’s a stimulus success story:  In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though:  There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

Officials with the Recovery Board, which was set up by the Obama Administration to track Stimulus spending, are chalking up the mistake to “human error.”  Fine… but such an error, together with the ever-increasing reports of fictitious Stimulus job numbers, begs the question:  How are the American people supposed to trust an Administration that claims to want to create jobs when it can’t even perform due diligence to provide an accurate count of the jobs that may or may not have been “created or saved?”

The answer:  We can’t and we shouldn’t.  Not because of the aforementioned errors and inflated Stimulus job numbers, but because the laws of economics say so.  As the editorial page of The Washington Times reminded readers last week, “Jobs created by government come at the expense of the jobs lost when government takes wealth from one part of the economy and moves it to another.”

Here’s a not-so-unique but tried-and-true idea to stimulate job growth:   How about the Administration abandon its tax-and-spend agenda and just get out of the way? 

Hey Mr. President, maybe it’s time to give FREEDOM a whirl?

More than ten percent — or 75,343 — of the jobs the Obama Administration claims have been “created or saved” by the $787 billion Stimulus package are “doubtful or imaginary.”

That’s the conclusion of a comprehensive analysis performed by David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway of The Washington Examiner, who compiled and analyzed media reports on the Stimulus over the course of the last two weeks. 

According to Freddoso and Hemingway:

The Obama administration has claimed that the $787 billion economic stimulus package ‘saved or created’ some 650,000 jobs. But almost as soon as the White House trotted out this figure, news organizations found huge exaggerations in the reported data. Many of the jobs reportedly created do not exist or cannot be accounted for.

The Examiner has created a handy interactive map highlighting the exaggerated job claims, broken down by state and locality.  The map is accompanied by a chart fully documenting the jobs “not really created or saved” by the Stimulus.   Check both out here.

Freddoso and Hemingway write that the project “remains a work in progress because relatively few newspapers have scrutinized stimulus spending so far.”  They plan to update the map and chart as new revelations are reported on by the media.

In one of the best critiques of action without regard to consequences, celebrated chaos theoretician Ian Malcolm said about overzealous experts that they were “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

From bio-ethics to evidence-based public policy, it is astounding that the 220 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and at least a score of senators who support the Obama Administration’s health care “reform” plan cannot answer the following question:

It’s one of the most basic, kitchen-table questions of the entire reform debate: Would the sweeping $900 billion overhaul actually lower spiraling insurance premiums for everyone?

No one really knows.”

And it’s not just that people haven’t read the bill, or studies analyzing its impact on the cost of health care. It’s that the data doesn’t exist.

At a recent Senate health committee hearing, two health care rivals – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, and Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor whose work is cited often by the White House – agreed comprehensive, objective evidence wasn’t available for small and large businesses.

“It’s insane,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Agreed. Thankfully, at least one Democratic Senator thinks information – not just assurances – is needed before committing American taxpayers to a trillion dollar decision.

The lack of data prompted Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) to request a broad analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on premiums, which he said was “a basic, bottom-line question that we have to have answered before we can decide if this is an intelligent thing to do.”

Now we see why Senator Bayh didn’t make the cut to be Vice President. He likes to consult factually-based, non-partisan research before voting in favor of the largest expansion of federal social services in 40 years.

Characteristically, top Obama advisors have a different view – one that chooses the devil we don’t know instead of the devil we do.

“I think you could always use more data,” (White House Health Czar Nancy-Ann) DeParle said, but added that “we have plenty of data on where things are and where things are headed without reform.”

Did you catch the barely concealed contempt for “business as usual” and the stifled urge to blame the previous administration?

All this would be comical if there weren’t a $787 billion stimulus package in circulation, the consequences of which still defy an ability to be measured or predicted. To their credit, some Democratic caucus members are joining Senator Bayh’s (belated) rush to judge the health care “reform” bill on its merits.

Lawmakers say they are hungry for data that assures them they are not voting for a bill that does the opposite what they have intended.

“I want to see an objective, third-party analysis from people who don’t have a conflict of interest,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I like evidence.”

Good. So do the people being asked to finance health care “reform” unto the nth generation.

You can read the entire article from Politico here.

An AP story today shows that the Obama Administration overcounted the number of jobs “created or saved” thus far by the stimulus package by about 5,000. That may sound like small change, but not when you realize that the Administration’s entire claim was only 30,000. In other words, one in every six of those jobs is make-believe.

Here’s an intellectual exercise to lay the stimulus bare. It came into effect on February 17 — 254 days ago. Based on the newest estimates that means it’s created about 100 jobs a day (or 2 per day per state). Leaving aside the opportunity cost of pulling the stimulus money out of the private sector, does anybody think that 14 jobs a week is going to pull California out of the morass?

It is straightforward logic that taxes discourage production and investment.  But judging by their latest bright idea to tax financial transactions, Democrats such as Barney Frank and their Big Labor overlords either don’t understand this or simply don’t care.

Fresh off a worldwide crisis from which it hasn’t even yet recovered, the financial industry is hardly the sector that tax-hungry liberals should attempt to further cripple.  This is particularly true in an era when market participants can relocate operations almost anywhere in the world, as the past decade’s out-migration from the United States has shown.  Ignoring this, liberals are now proposing a tax of 0.1% to 0.25% on almost every form of financial transaction.  So how exactly is this supposed to help America’s financial industry recover?

Worse, the proceeds would be directed toward (you guessed it) ObamaCare or more futile “stimulus” spending, despite warnings from economists about the negative consequences for markets.  “I was one of the ones who suggested the idea,” says Congressman Frank.

Which, come to think of it, is almost argument enough for any sane person to oppose this bizarre new proposed tax-grab.

From USA Today:

The $787 billion economic recovery package … is stimulating growth in the federal government as agencies hire thousands of workers and spend millions of dollars to oversee and implement the package, according to government records and spokesmen. … That’s helped fuel the continued growth of the federal government, which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008…”

Have no fear:  John Berry, head of the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management, says the increase is small and temporary.  Believe that, then there’s a bridge in Brooklyn for sale with your name written all over it.

In related news, the Labor Department this morning reported that the number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits this week was 530,000.  While the number was less than economists expected, that brought the total number of jobs lost since December, 2008 to nearly 4 million, most coming from the private sector.  This, despite Congress’ passage of the $787 billion taxpayer-funded stimulus bill.