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The blatant arrogance of a young and inexperienced President trying to spin his failures is always something to behold. It usually is a combination of denial and panic, leading to completely obvious flights of fantasy. This White House has taken this denial to an all new level.

In the case of the now failed liberal ‘stimulus’ bill passed by Obama and the liberal Congress, which has done nothing to create careers, team Obama is out trying to sell the idea that President Obama saved or created 1 million jobs:

President Obama’s economic advisers estimated Thursday that the economic stimulus package has saved or created about 1 million jobs, drawing immediate criticism from Republicans.

I will give the White House credit, no one has piled it higher or deeper than this crowd. And it helps when you have a brain dead and lazy media who cannot face up to the fact their political savior is screwing up so badly. The “One” really is piece of work.

This White House is so far in over their heads they have nothing left to do but try to play Beltway Bob (DC’s version of Baghdad Bob as the Marines were entering Baghdad in 2003).

Let me present some hard data to illustrate just how bad this fabrication really is. As of August 12th, the job creation component of the stimulus bill had not even spent 2% of the budgeted money – as the following graphs show, per the government’s own recovery site.

In the first graph there are 4 sets of columns showing: (from left to right) (1) the amount budgeted for stimulus programs for each of the 6 organizations I have been tracking, (2) the amount allocated to to date to specific job-creating programs in that organization, (3) the amount actually spent to date creating jobs and (4) the amount left unspent from the total budget. (click image to enlarge)

The second chart translates the dollar amounts for the last three sets of columns in the previous chart into percentages of the budgeted amounts for each organization, showing what is the percent allocated, percent spent and percent unspent. (again, click image to enlarge)

Summary:

• $105 billion was budgeted for job creation efforts across the 6 organizations (1/3rd of all job creating stimulus programs in the stimulus bill)
• Nearly 1/3rd, or $33 billion, has been allocated to programs (the only bright spot in this bleak picture)
• Just under 2% has been spent creating jobs, which totals $1.9 billion
• Over 98% of the money, or $103 billion of the money budgeted for job creation, has yet to make its way out of the federal bureaucracy.

As has been the case since February when this bill passed, the job creation money is stuck in the bowels of the federal government. Worse, only 1/3rd has been allocated to authorized job-creating programs. The other 2/3rds cannot be spent by year’s end because getting allocated is just the first step to a nearly year long process of getting contracts in place. That means there is little chance there will be any significant stimulus money hitting the economy until after Christmas.

So, is it even plausible the liberal porkulus bill passed last February could have saved or created 1 million jobs? Of course not!

But that is not the only data I have from the government that proves the lies coming from the White House. Let’s look at the Department of Labor’s underemployment rate (U6) since January 2006 through August 2009. Under employment is defined by DoL as:

Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian force plus all marginally attached workers

In other words, this is the historic high 9.7% unemployment the nation hit in August, plus all the people working below their potential and customary level. This is the measure of people underemployed, and I have graphed it to illustrate a frightening trend:

What this graph shows is the underemployed (blue lines) are growing at a faster pace than the unemployed (brown/red lines). This means the U6 group is larger and expanding faster, in essence it shows more and more people losing their job, or working in substandard jobs.

The trend lines clearly show a faster rise in U6 than in the more widely reported U3. While the U3 hit a 26 year high of 9.7%, the U6 hit a staggering 16.8% in August.  If Team Obama did anything in the past 6 months, it more likely they put more people into the underemployed category – those who have lost their primary job and are working at a much lower or part time job to avoid going completely under.

And that is still not the only data I have at my fingertips care of the DoL, which further proves the lies from the White House. There is another metric called the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program which extends the normal unemployment benefits 13-20 weeks:

The EUC program was created on June 30, 2008, by the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-252).

…

On November 21, 2008, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-449) expanded EUC to 20 weeks nationwide and created a second tier of 13 more weeks of EUC for individuals in States with high unemployment rates.

As you may have predicted, if the stimulus package was working it would be lowering or holding this metric steady. It is of course sky rocketing as good jobs (careers) are still being shed. For the week of February 14th, 2009 (within a week or so of the passage of the faux liberal stimulus bill) the number of people on EUC roles was 1,432,919.

As of the last weekly report (9/10/09) on unemployment claims (which is the only place you can find this metric reported) the EUC roles had grown to an astounding 3,102,877.

That is an increase of 1,669,958 people who had to go from normal unemployment, to extended unemployment, to EUC! That is an increase of 116%! I can safely say Team Obama has expanded the roles of this last ditch support net for the unemployed. That much is certain.

The 4-week average for the number people enrolled for unemployment benefits was 4,839,500 back on 2/14/09. The 4-week average in the last report for 9/5/09 the roles blossomed to 6,182,500 on unemployment.

Even worse, extrapolate the number of people in the U6 number (the weekly and monthly reports focus on the U3 metric). If 9.7% equates to 6.2 million people on unemployment, then the number underemployed must roughly be an additional 4.5 million, bringing the total for U6 to 10.7 million out of work or underemployed.

Can President Obama claim he made a 10% dent in the number of people covered under U6?  Not credibly. But even if he could, what is he crowing about? The numbers have been getting steadily worse, as I showed in the U3 and U6 graph above.

As someone said today on AM Radio – claiming credit for any slow down in the job erosion is like claiming credit for the Sun rising in the morning. The economy will stop sliding and turn around at some point. It will happen sooner or later, no thanks to President Obama and his failed liberal stimulus package.

Note: all the data presented in this post is from the US government. These are the metrics the White House doesn’t want you to know about.

Update: The New York Times had a great article about the underemployed recently, which gives a human face to the tragically flawed stimulus bill:

They were left out of the latest unemployment rate, as they are every month: millions of hidden casualties of the Great Recession who are not counted in the rate because they have stopped looking for work.

But that does not mean these discouraged Americans do not want to be employed. As interviews with several of them demonstrate, many desperately long for a job, but their inability to find one has made them perhaps the ultimate embodiment of pessimism as this recession wears on.

Obamanomics, the model of success for Obamacare?

Update: Daniel Henninger makes a valid point on this 8th anniversary of 9/11:

The economy is Barack Obama’s 9/11. If you’re Mr. Obama, it must seem a little unfair. One year ago at the Labor Day turn toward the stretch, Mr. Obama and his team were on the cusp of one of the most thrilling wins in American presidential history.

…

This wasn’t just a recession, a reality already discussed in the summer campaign. There was a sense after the nightmare week of Sept. 15 that the American economy was imploding.

Unlike 9-11, where President Bush set aside all other priorities and desires and focused like a homing rocket on our enemies to ensure our security, President Obama doesn’t seem very focused, let alone successful, on this challenge. Joe Biden did say their team would be tested early and fail. He was too right.

Tags: Emergency Unemployment Compensation, Stimulus Bill, Unemployment