Thanks for the Stimulus

This post is from Charles Payne, whose commentaries I read frequently. You can get them at Wstreet Market Commentary (www.wstreet.com).  President Obama stopped in Ohio this past week touting the stimulus. Also thanks for the pep talk that costs taxpayers a million dollars. We appreciate it in Ohio!

This morning, we had Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on Varney & Co. and he said the stimulus bill was just an excuse to spend money. That comment more or less hit the nail on the head. Today, President Obama will touch down for an hour and a half in Ohio to tout the 10,000th stimulus plan project. So I decided to check out what's going on in Ohio. Well, for starters the unemployment rate in Ohio is 10.7%, which is well above the national average. As for the big deal today that we should all be standing and playing our vuvuzela (that horn from the World Cup that sounds like a swarm of bees) for, it involves adding turning and bike lanes, and widening sidewalks around the Nationwide Children's Hospital. The $25.0 million project is expected to create 300 jobs.

I always question these job tallies, although in this case jobs they think will be created will cost $83,000 each. Of course, on the other end of that spectrum is the eight jobs created or saved by a project that saw the purchase of 16 Dell laptops. Yes, the $34,626 bill enabled the retention of six sales jobs, the creation of an engineering job, and a temp customer service job. That's efficiency or fantasy at $4,300 per job. The thing is the purchase alone was considered a "project." Additional projects for Ohio include six dump/garbage trucks, each considered a separate project along with 3 police cruisers, 2 fire trucks, and an ambulance.

To Congressman Ryan's point of view a new bike lane is nice to have, but when 40 million people are on food stamps this simply isn't a priority. By the way, the Administration has spent more than $1.2 billion on bike lanes and trails. The financial crisis has provided cover to push through anti-business and anti-prosperity measures under the guise of stimulus and other programs. Stimulus money has been used to buy buses throughout the state of Ohio:

* $8.4 million Akron
* $8.5 million Toledo
* $5.2 million Canton
* $18.3 million Dayton

New buses are nice, but it's hard to justify them economically when we need to be making investments. The plan has been a spending program out of the gate and used phrases like "shovel ready" to gain public support. This plan has been an unmitigated failure, but because it has failed so badly there is a push for yet another stimulus program so get used to seeing ribbon cutting ceremonies in the days and weeks ahead.