Rutledge joins chorus questioning stimulus numbers

Here’s an easy one, but you need to start someplace. It may anger the voters in Maryland’s 18th Congressional District but that’s the price paid for speaking out. Oh wait, Maryland has only 8 Congressional districts? Well then, carry on Jim:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Rutledge today called for a comprehensive independent audit of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ program created and passed earlier this year by Congressional Democrats and demanded heightened accountability for taxpayer dollars spent to date on the government-run program.

Rutledge pointed to a report on the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act released this week by the Obama administration that claims the program has “created or saved” 640,329 jobs nationwide as a result of $159 billion in government spending – a cost of $248,309 per job.

And more than half of the jobs claimed were in education, the government sector, despite the Obama administration’s earlier promises that 90 percent of the positions would be in the private job market, where this year alone millions of Americans have lost their paychecks and livelihoods.

“This Democrat-passed boondoggle not only blows a billion-dollar hole in the federal budget deficit through 2019 – further burdening our children and grandchildren with piles of government debt – but simply has not generated the number or type of jobs many Americans are desperately searching for right now,” Rutledge said. “It’s reckless and irresponsible and proves that the federal government has absolutely no business in the job creation business.”

For the state of Maryland, the depth of reckless spending appears to be even greater. According to the government Web site Recovery.gov, which tracks the program’s spending, the $3.1 billion of taxpayer funding doled out to date in the name of Marylanders has resulted in 6,748 jobs at a cost of $470,989 each. Well over half the jobs cited were in state government programs and agencies.

“Ms. Mikulski and her Democratic colleagues in the Senate should cease operation of this program and immediately initiate a comprehensive audit of every taxpayer dollar spent to date,” Rutledge said. “This program is an abuse of the public trust and should not stand.” (Emphasis in original.)

The so-called stimulus program has been a boondoggle thus far. In truth, much of the money has gone simply to prop up state budgets (just ask Governor O’Malley about that) so maybe that goes under “job saved”? But were those jobs worth saving?

Imagine this pretzel logic if you will. The federal government borrows billions of dollars – either taking them out of the private-sector economy or creating them out of whole cloth – in order to create jobs that would likely have been more efficiently made had the dollars remained in the private sector. So the net result is that pencil-pushers who produce little more than mountains of paperwork remain employed while those who actually use the capital to make things and invest in the American Dream watch the dollars get sucked out of their wallet while knowing those remaining will be worth less once the inevitable inflation hits. Inflation is great for a debtor but lousy for a creditor.

I’ve noted time and again that what the federal government calls “stimulus” does a poor job of promoting long-term growth. The direct payments made during the Bush administration simply went to savings or paid off individual debts (great for banking interests) while this Obama stimulus has made unemployment shoot right through the promised 8 percent ceiling.

So Rutledge is absolutely correct in calling for a premature end to the stimulus and accounting of that which was already spent. Keep hammering on that point, Jim.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

One thought on “Rutledge joins chorus questioning stimulus numbers”

  1. In light of Mr. Rutledge’s comments I would like call for an audit of his campaign funds. HE IS IN MORE DEBT THAN HE’S RAISED! Is that how we got in this fiscal crisis, taking out more loans than we could pay!

    Thank Mr. Rutledge for further prolonging this nations economic recovery.

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