Who’s Right on Stimulus Job Creation? The Obama Administration’s Fiction vs. The American People’s Reality

Report examines facts behind division between Administration rhetoric and the American people

WASHINGTON D.C. – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Darrell Issa today released a report, “Who’s Right on Stimulus Job Creation? The Obama Administration’s Fiction vs. The American People’s Reality,” that examines the facts and rhetoric surrounding the Administration’s failed efforts to spur private sector job creation.

“The American people reject the Administration’s claims on stimulus job creation and the flawed economic theory behind the assertion that massive deficit spending would fix our economy,” said Rep. Issa. “As deficit spending pushes us closer to the dangers that have taken hold of Greece, Portugal, and Spain this report attempts to explain the disconnect between liberal economic theories and the American people’s reality.”

Among the report’s highlights:

• The Administration is heralding the success of the stimulus based not on what is actually happening to American employment but rather on what its economic models say must be happening, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary:

The more than 2 million jobs the Administration claims to have created or saved through the stimulus are “based not on observations of the economy’s recent performance — but merely on the administration’s unshakable belief that deficit spending must create jobs and growth. … [T]he White House staff’s ‘proof’ that the stimulus created jobs is an economic model that they programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs.” (p.4)

• Fewer Private Sector Jobs, Bigger Government:

Instead of the 90/10 ratio between private sector and public sector job creation promised by the President, “the data [from the first period of recipient reporting] suggests that well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector. They include the 325,000 jobs in education, including teachers, administrators and support staff, as well as many of the 73,000 other jobs paid for with education grants, many of which were in public safety.” (p.5)

• The American People are Right about the Impact of the Stimulus:

Fourteen months after its passage, the Obama Administration and many Congressional Democrats have celebrated the stimulus package as a sensational success. Using outdated and flawed economic models and continually shifting the goal posts from the creation of millions of new jobs to unverifiable declarations that even more jobs would have been lost without the stimulus, the Administration has continued to ignore all evidence that proves both the fallacy of its economic models and the folly of its economic policies. (p.8)

Click here to read the report, “Who’s Right on Stimulus Job Creation? The Obama Administration’s Fiction vs. The American People’s Reality”

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