Jul 03 2009
Preempting Possible Obama Administration Spin On Stimulus
The $787 Billion dollar stimulus bill had three parts. One of these parts was around $305B of spending on shovel ready jobs. Some of this money went to states, but the bulk stayed within the federal government as spending programs.
I have been tracking 5 departments and one agency regarding their stimulus spending, as reported on the US government recovery website since the first data showed up with the budget numbers. Something very syrange has been going on in this area as we head into the 4th July weekend and the abysmal June unemployment report (see below). For two weeks there had been no reporting on the stimulus spending, and we were heading into a 3rd week without updates as of yesterday.Â
But low and behold, now that we are into the July 4th Holiday and everyone’s attention is on the long weekend, the data is finally updated for the missing two weeks (through 6/29/09). Some folks in the federal government must have worked late into the night to get these updates out (I did check at the end of the word day as the rest of us who work for the government headed into the holiday weekend).
Why wait so late? To miss the news cycles of course. So the hard data showing the lack of stimulus spending would not be available over a weekend where all the talk should be about failed stimulus spending and rising unemployment. Heaven forbid actual government data be out there showing how the liberal stimulus plan is stuck in neutral doing nothing.
Here are my updated charts through 6/29/09. In the first graph there are 4 sets of columns showing: (from left to right) (1) the amount budgeted for stimulus programs in that organization, (2) the amount allocated to specific programs, (3) the amount actually spent creating jobs (the bottom line) and (4) the amount unspent from the total budget. (click image to enlarge)
As everyone can see much of the money has not yet even been assigned to programs (an arduous, but legally required process to make sure programs are valid). The second chart translates the dollar amounts for the last three sets of columns into percentages of the budgeted amounts. (click image to enlarge)
Bottom line: around 99% of the job-creating money for these departments/agencies is stuck in the government coffers – doing nothing. Here’s the slatest ummary across all 6 organizations:
- $105 billion was budgeted across the organizations to start new programs and create jobs (the largest amounts going  to the Departments of Energy and Transportation)
- Of that, only $28.4 billion (was $22.7B) as even been allocated to programs to be spent (27%)
- The total amount actually spent to date on stimulus programs: $0.606 billion (was $0.350B), which is a paltry 0.57%.
The Department of Transportation is well ahead of the other organizations, in that it has 43% of its money now obligated to programs. But it still has only spent <1% of the money budgeted by Congress. The Department of State has spent just over 1% of its tiny budget, making it the lead job creator in this pack of turtles. Five months since passage of the stimulus money and less than 1% is stimulating any jobs.
What is interesting is the Obama administration could claim it has more than doubled the stimulus spending to date for the month of June. They can do this because twice nearly nothing is still nearly nothing. Watch to see if the administration tries to spin their abysmal performance, grasping at data taken out of context to fool the pliant and brain washed media.
BTW, Paul Krugman today illustrates why just about any fool should be able to get a PhD, and Nobel Prizes are handed out to media sock puppets:
O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that?
Let’s do the math.
I did the math. It is not the size of the stimulus, it was the idiotic mechanism of using the bloated and constipated federal government to deliver the money to create jobs that failed. It was the liberal fantasy that government spending was as good or better than tax cuts – which by the way are immediate. Do the math yourself Dr PhD, and use something called ‘t’ (for time) in your equations. The RATE OF SPENDING on stimulus jobs for the government HAS BEEN NEAR ZERO for five long, painful months!
See, economists basically add and subtract – they don’t do time phasing very well like physicists and engineers must, unless it is compound interest. That seems to be the totality of their ability to compute over time. That is why Krugman naively thinks the stimulus money budgeted in February has been spent. What a buffoon.
[…] the stimulus spending: AJ says is tracking it and he’s unhappy. Very […]
Something I read in a comment on another blog:
Basically the idea being that the very ideas that the Democrats have today are not new. People wanted to use our government to do the very same sorts of things in the 18th century. And we developed a system of government designed specifically to impede such central control. They keystone of that system was the Senate being appointed by the state legislators. This gave the state governments a key check on federal power. In the early 20th century this was changed to make the Senate nothing more than an extra seat in congress for the largest urban areas of the state as they usually carry the vote for Senate.
So we have two houses of government. The first is traditional house of representatives and the second is the house of large cities and the state governments have lost forever their check on federal power.
OT
So Palin is resigning at the end of July.
CP,
Excellent news! I was wondering why all the hit pieces were coming out.
Palin has a great shot at this, given how badly then dems have screwed up the economy.
AJStrata
I’ve received an email from the Palin people who tell me that this move is in fact to run for President in 2012.
http://macsmind.com/wordpress/2009/07/03/sarah-palin-resigns-as-governor/
Whew! For a moment there I was afraid she was offered a position in the Obama Administration (to shut her up). I was afraid Obama would ask her to be Ambassador to Russia (that would make sense to Obama since she can see Russia from her house). LOL
There has also been recent blogosphere criticism of her (Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, etc) that she needs to go home and study if she wants to make a run in 2012. Seems she was ahead of that gameplan.
Look for attacks on Palin to heat up like you have never seen before. And, Romney…Huckabee….you’ve got a problem.
Would she make a run for the AK Senate seat in 2010 as a steppong stone? She would be as powerful in the Senate for Republicans as Hillary was for the Democrats. She could oppose Obama’s agenda and have a huge megaphone to do it. I don’t know if that would be a smart idea or not. But, it did work for Obama.
Time will tell as to what her full gameplan is.
Rumors from family friends is that she is done with politics forever. Won’t be running for any office again.
But the more I think about it, the less I believe it. I think we are seeing the start of a very different sort of campaign. My guess is that she is going to be doing a talk show and talking-head blitz holding the Democrats feet to the fire for the next couple of years starting about August 1.
[…] to stimulate the economy. It is now an unavoidable economic disaster for the Dems. There is no way to turn it around any more,and there is no way for Dems to blame the successful Governor from Alaska for their utter failures. […]
[…] Preempting Possible Obama Administration Spin On Stimulus […]
[…] date, in the government organizations I am tracking, less than 1% of the money budgeted in February for job creating stimulus has been spent. That is basically zero! No wonder we […]
[…] and spent for 5 departments and one agency which totals one third of that $305 billion. And to date they have spent less than 1% – only $0.35 billion. These organizations include the two big job creating departments, Energy and […]
[…] I wrote a post before the 4th of July attempting to preempt any BS spin from the DC liberals in charge of the current economic fiasco, showing how little stimulus money as been spent creating jobs directly (not indirectly through the measly tax cuts or state programs). The bottom line is this, less than 1% of the stimulus money budgeted for federal spending programs in the organizations I have been tracking, including those in the two premier job creating agencies of Transportation and Energy, has been actually spent. Here is the government’s own reporting data which came out on July 3rd and covers efforts through June 26th: In the first graph there are 4 sets of columns showing: (from left to right) (1) the amount budgeted for stimulus programs in that organization, (2) the amount allocated to specific programs, (3) the amount actually spent creating jobs (the bottom line) and (4) the amount unspent from the total budget. (click image to enlarge) […]