A local project that President Barack Obama cited during a visit Wednesday to Columbus as an example of how the federal stimulus package has worked isn't actually being funded with stimulus dollars.
The president spoke at the North Side home of architect Joe Weithman, and both Obama's comments and information from the White House touted Weithman's work on a project that the president said was being at least partially funded by the $787 billion stimulus bill passed last year.
"What we've been trying to do is to build infrastructure that puts people back to work but also improves the quality of life in communities like Columbus," Obama said in his remarks. "So Joe is an architect, and he's now working on a new police station that was funded in part with Recovery Act funds."
But although federal money is being used for the project in question, there are no stimulus dollars involved, said Columbus Finance Director Paul Rakosky, a Democrat.
Rakosky said the project is not a police station but rather the renovation of an abandoned warehouse that the city purchased on the South Side in 2007 to house the city's police crime lab and property room.
Weithman's firm, Mull & Weithman Architects, is handling the $300,000 in design work for the crime lab as part of the project, and the $300,000 is coming from a congressional earmark, Rakosky said.
When White House spokesman Matt Lehrich was asked about the discrepancy, all he would say is: "The president's trip to Columbus was, in part, to highlight the role that small businesses, like Joe's, will play in creating jobs in communities across the country. That's a fact, and it's why he's been urging Republicans to stop blocking a proposal to cut taxes for small businesses that are looking to grow and hire more workers."
Background information the White House provided before the president's visit didn't identify the stimulus bill as the source of funding for the work, but it said the architectural firm that Weithman runs "was able to keep two of their employees that otherwise would have been laid off due to work on a police station renovation that received infrastructure funding."
It also said Weithman hopes to hire an additional employee as the economy improves and as "additional projects, some of which could be funded by the Recovery Act, are secured."
The White House did properly credit the stimulus bill for tax subsidies that Weithman's wife, Rhonda, used to maintain the family's health-care coverage after she lost her job last year.
Rakosky also noted that Columbus has received $70 million in stimulus money for infrastructure work, which he said is freeing up capital dollars for other projects such as the warehouse renovation.
Based on anecdotal evidence from business owners, insurance brokers and the media, insurance premiums on policies renewed for 2010 and 2011 are increasing 20 percent to 40 percent. These rising premiums are driven by mandated coverage that includes free or low-cost preventive care, non-exclusion of children with pre-existing medical conditions, required coverage for children up to age 26 and the elimination of lifetime medical reimbursement limits.
Americans may recall that Mr. Obama promised, "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan." While this mandated coverage in the healthcare reform legislation may be desired by some people who are willing to pay the cost, there are certainly other medical insurance consumers who would rather have their current lower-cost coverage. However, under the legislation, contrary to the president's assurance, they are not permitted to keep their preferred lower-cost healthcare plans.
The healthcare reform legislation also will have a devastating impact on the spending power of working Americans and our economy as the higher premiums kick in. In order to understand this impact, it is instructive to look at the actual impact of the legislation on a small company. In 2010, some companies’ plans cost approximately $15,000 per year for family healthcare coverage, of which the company paid 60 percent and the employee paid 40. For 2011, the premium for this coverage will increase 30 percent, or $4,500.
The average non-management employee in this company earns $30,000 per year. The employee's share of the increased premium will cost $1,800. That is equivalent to a 6 percent pay cut for the average worker. The legislation will not allow them to keep their old policy at a lower cost.
Do you now feel misled by the Obama administration, or just outright lied to to further their passage of this atrocious bill?
Tens of thousands of people will lose their Jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion Stimulus Act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in Government, at Non-Profit organizations and at many small businesses.
In rural Perry County, Tenn., the program helped pay for roughly 400 new jobs in the public and private sectors. But in a county of 7,600 people, those jobs had a big impact: they reduced Perry County’s unemployment rate to less than 14 percent this August, from the Depression-like levels of more than 25 percent that it hit last year after its biggest employer, an auto parts factory, moved to Mexico.
If the Stimulus program ends on schedule next week, Perry County officials said, an estimated 300 people there will lose their jobs — the equivalent of another factory closing.
“It’s very scary, because there’s just No Work,” said Brian Davis, a 36-year-old father of four, who got a Stimulus-subsidized job with the City of Lobelville after he lost his job of 17 years at an auto parts plant that shed hundreds of jobs. Now he faces the prospect of unemployment again.
“This was a huge help,” Mr. Davis said. “The way the economy’s been and the way people are struggling, you’re worried about putting food on the table for your children and keeping the electricity on.”
The money that pays Mr. Davis’s salary, and the salaries of tens of thousands of other people around the country, will dry up after next Thursday, when the welfare program in the stimulus act that pays the bills for those jobs is set to expire. While the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress want to extend the program, they are meeting stiff resistance from Republicans, many of whom oppose all things stimulus.
If the program has encountered hostility from Republicans on Capitol Hill, it has been embraced by some Republican governors who have used it to create jobs in their states.
In Mississippi, an innovative program used the money to pay private companies to hire nearly 3,200 workers, and to pay their salaries on a sliding scale so that the employers would end up paying the entire amount after six months.
Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, described the initiative there as “welfare to work.” Mr. Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said in an interview last winter that he hoped the program would be extended past this month, since it took so long for the state’s program to get federal approval.
The Federal program has helped employ nearly 130,000 adults and has paid for nearly an equal number of summer jobs for young people, according to an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy institute in Washington.
If the program is allowed to lapse, up to 26,000 workers in Illinois will lose their jobs in the coming weeks, along with 12,000 workers in Pennsylvania and thousands more in other states, according to LaDonna Pavetti, the director of the center’s welfare reform and income support division.
“I think that given what we know about the number of people that have been impacted by the Recession and the limited jobs available, this has been a lifeline for many families with kids who would otherwise not know when their next rent payment or meal would be coming in,” Dr. Pavetti said.
The money came from a pot of $5 billion that was included in the Stimulus package as an emergency fund for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the main cash Welfare program for families with children. Of the $4.3 billion that has been approved so far, $1.4 billion has gone toward basic assistance, $1.8 billion has been used to help families pay one-time emergency expenses like rent and utility bills, and a little over $1 billion has been used to subsidize jobs.
Some economists consider subsidized jobs one of the most cost-effective ways to stimulate employment: there is no overhead or profit, as there is when firms win bids to perform work for the government.
Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat who championed the idea of creating jobs in hard-hit Perry County and other places with high unemployment, said he would like to see the program extended because it had a more direct impact than other components of the stimulus act, like infrastructure projects and tax cuts.
“I thought we were able to make very efficient use of these funds,” he said in an interview on Friday, “with the money not going off into the ether to create jobs on a spreadsheet, but going where you could go find people who had jobs today who did not have them before.”
There are success stories in Tennessee. After the Armstrong Pie Company hired 12 workers with stimulus money, it was able to expand its production, add delivery routes and increase sales, said Dalyn Patterson, who owns the company with her husband, Bert. The business increased enough that she said she expected to keep 11 of the 12 workers.
But if the program was supposed to act as a bridge to keep people working until the economy started adding jobs in large numbers again, officials in Tennessee said that it was ending a bit early. And many of the 300 workers who are set to lose their stimulus jobs in Perry County may not be able to collect unemployment benefits. So while people there are grateful for the program, they are nervous about what comes next.
“It was very much a Band-Aid,” said Mayor Robby J. Moore of Lobelville, Tenn. “And now the Band-Aid is coming off.”
Speaking at a company in Durham, Vice President Joe Biden touted the administration's recovery efforts today, saying it had helped create or save 62,000 jobs in North Carolina.
Biden appeared at Cree, a manufacturer of energy efficient LED lighting products that had received $39 million in tax credits through the federal stimulus act, Rob Christensen reports. The company has hired 375 workers in the past year.
Biden did not try to sugar coat the continued high unemployment rate, but said the economy was on the upswing.
"The Recovery Act is working," Biden told a crowd of 150 people that included Cree employees and public officials.
Biden said that the nation's 10,000th stimulus project, a bypass around Sanford, was scheduled to begin next month.
State and local officials in attendance included Democrats Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, House Speaker Joe Hackney, former House Speaker and now Sen. Dan Blue, Senate Majority Leader Martin Nesbitt and Durham Mayor Bill Bell.
Although Biden made no mention of the administration's health care bill, the timing of the visit — days before a scheduled House vote — was likely to be seen as a signal that the administration has the backs of the Democrats who support the health care plan.
No members of the House Congressional Delegation accompanied Biden.
Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu toured a laboratory at Cree before Biden's 25-minute speech. He was accompanied by a film crew from ABC News which is working on a story about a day in the life of the vice president.
Throughout his speech, Biden repeatedly emphasized the administrations concerns about the need for an economic recovery and to get people back to work.
"We want to make sure that everyone who aspires to the middle class can get there," Biden said.
Prior to signing his Federal “Stimulus” bill in early 2009, President Obama warned, “If we do not move swiftly to sign (the act) into law, an Economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.”
Here in North Carolina, Governor Perdue similarly declared that we were “facing the consequences of the national economic crisis,” and that failure to pass the stimulus bill would “jeopardize the education of our children and the health care of our citizens.”
She further noted that the stimulus will help “Create Jobs, Stimulate the Economy, and provide relief to North Carolina's families.”
However one year later, the debate over the stimulus bill’s effectiveness rages on.
A close inspection of stimulus grants and contracts awarded to North Carolina reveals a rather questionable strategy for the disbursement of stimulus funds. Many projects seem completely unrelated to avoiding an economic “catastrophe,” but rather an ad hoc satisfaction of countless dubious wish lists.
The Civitas Institute poured through the Federal Recovery Act website charged with tracking stimulus spending, and created the following list – The 10 Worst Federal Stimulus Projects in North Carolina:
Wake Forest University was granted money to “study the effects of self-administering cocaine on the glutamate system on monkeys.” Well, at least the monkeys will be stimulated.
This grant is used to retain four professional dancers from the North Carolina Dance Theatre’s second company. Nice for them, but why are tax dollars financing what should be a privately-funded philanthropic organization?
Funds granted to Wake Forest University to study “preliminary data on the efficacy of integral yoga for reducing menopausal hot flashes.” The President warned us that the stimulus plan was needed to avoid an economic “catastrophe.” How does this study help revive the economy?
Nearly half a million taxpayer dollars will go toward funding more propaganda selling the “benefits” of the stimulus plan. The federal government created the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, while North Carolina established the Office of Economic Recovery & Investment for these very purposes. Apparently, that’s just not enough propaganda.
This grant to UNC-Charlotte will fund the development of computer technology to digitally record the dance moves of performers. The recorded movements can then be reviewed and manipulated by a computer program. Although creating virtual-reality type technology for dance movements may be interesting to those involved, how does this serve to “protect the education of our children”? At an average salary of roughly $47,000, this money could have saved 16 North Carolina teacher jobs.
A graphic designer and archivist will retain their jobs thanks to this grant. The American Dance Festival hosts dance classes, workshops and engages in other charitable activities to help support dancers. How will this help reverse a major international financial crisis, exactly?
Why are taxpayers from across the country forced to finance construction of a local government office? This is a classic case of earmark pork spending.
Was the Economic Stimulus Package enacted by Congress to really help hurting American people, or just another Political gimmick established to distribute as Political Favors for future elections?
How many jobs did it really create or save?
Better yet how high did it raise the National Deficit?
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure Domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common Defense, promote the General Welfare, and Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Prior to signing his Federal “Stimulus” bill in early 2009, President Obama warned, “If we do not move swiftly to sign (the act) into law, an Economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.”
Here in North Carolina, Governor Perdue similarly declared that we were “facing the consequences of the national economic crisis,” and that failure to pass the stimulus bill would “jeopardize the education of our children and the health care of our citizens.”
She further noted that the stimulus will help “Create Jobs, Stimulate the Economy, and provide relief to North Carolina's families.”
However one year later, the debate over the stimulus bill’s effectiveness rages on.
A close inspection of stimulus grants and contracts awarded to North Carolina reveals a rather questionable strategy for the disbursement of stimulus funds. Many projects seem completely unrelated to avoiding an economic “catastrophe,” but rather an ad hoc satisfaction of countless dubious wish lists.
The Civitas Institute poured through the Federal Recovery Act website charged with tracking stimulus spending, and created the following list – The 10 Worst Federal Stimulus Projects in North Carolina:
Wake Forest University was granted money to “study the effects of self-administering cocaine on the glutamate system on monkeys.” Well, at least the monkeys will be stimulated.
This grant is used to retain four professional dancers from the North Carolina Dance Theatre’s second company. Nice for them, but why are tax dollars financing what should be a privately-funded philanthropic organization?
Funds granted to Wake Forest University to study “preliminary data on the efficacy of integral yoga for reducing menopausal hot flashes.” The President warned us that the stimulus plan was needed to avoid an economic “catastrophe.” How does this study help revive the economy?
Nearly half a million taxpayer dollars will go toward funding more propaganda selling the “benefits” of the stimulus plan. The federal government created the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, while North Carolina established the Office of Economic Recovery & Investment for these very purposes. Apparently, that’s just not enough propaganda.
This grant to UNC-Charlotte will fund the development of computer technology to digitally record the dance moves of performers. The recorded movements can then be reviewed and manipulated by a computer program. Although creating virtual-reality type technology for dance movements may be interesting to those involved, how does this serve to “protect the education of our children”? At an average salary of roughly $47,000, this money could have saved 16 North Carolina teacher jobs.
A graphic designer and archivist will retain their jobs thanks to this grant. The American Dance Festival hosts dance classes, workshops and engages in other charitable activities to help support dancers. How will this help reverse a major international financial crisis, exactly?
Why are taxpayers from across the country forced to finance construction of a local government office? This is a classic case of earmark pork spending.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is moving ahead with plans to cut 880 jobs, and the board will need to decide in March whether to close schools to save money in 2010-11, Superintendent Peter Gorman said today.
At a news conference this morning, Gorman said he’s moving forward on all four levels of cuts he presented last week. Those included eliminating 658 teacher jobs; making unspecified cuts to Central Administration, transportation and building maintenance; and eliminating middle-school sports.
And he’s crunching numbers on more dire scenarios, such as closing underfilled schools, eliminating magnet busing and delaying the opening of two new high schools. In private talks with board members that have lasted two to 3 1/2 hours, Gorman has outlined which schools might face closing and how much that would save. Neither he nor board members have disclosed details.
Big-city school districts across the country are planning to lay off teachers and close schools, as the recession lingers for another year.
The board could still back away from some of the proposed cuts, but the district must move quickly to meet legal guidelines for some layoffs and to settle questions that affect staff and students.
On Tuesday, Gorman told the board he’ll delay his formal budget proposal from March 9 to April 12, similar to what he did last year when faced with major cuts. The board will vote on a budget May 11 and present it to county officials later that week.
Ultimately, the number of jobs cut depends on how much money the state and county provide – information that won’t be in hand until summer.
Gorman said today the board must decide about closings, delays and major busing changes during three special budget meetings in March. He and several board members say keeping Hough and Rocky River high schools empty for a year is the least popular option, but there’s been no vote to eliminate that plan from consideration.
Board members say they expect to see significant changes in the six regional administrative offices Gorman launched two years ago.
Some have voiced interest in finding other ways to pay for middle-school sports, such as adding admission fees for those events or tacking a surcharge onto high-school tickets.
CMS is competing with other agencies for scarce county money, and some members say they want to be more aggressive in asking for extra money to open the new high schools and deal with enrollment growth. But board chair Eric Davis says the talk of dire cuts isn’t posturing to pressure Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Commissioners.
“This is not a game we’re playing,” he said.
Video and written information about Charlotte-Mecklenburg budget planning are available on the district’s Web site. Gorman’s news conference will air on CMS-TV Cable 3 at 10 p.m. today and 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday.
While the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are out in force this week touting the success of the $787 billion economic stimulus package signed exactly one year ago, critics are pointing to a still-dismal jobs picture and deflating public confidence as signs that the ballyhooed benefits of the stimulus bill, as one GOP leader put it, were a "fiction" and not worth the cost.
The United States of America owes $1.6 trillion more today than it did a year ago. The jobless rate has climbed from 8.1 percent to 9.7 percent. And the deficit has soared to record levels, with another record likely to be set this year.
Happy anniversary.
While the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are out in force this week touting the success of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, signed exactly one year ago, critics are pointing to a still-dismal jobs picture and deflating public confidence as signs that the ballyhooed benefits of the stimulus bill, as one GOP leader put it, were a "fiction." And certainly not worth the cost.
President Obama and Vice President Biden argued Wednesday that the stimulus has saved or created 2 million jobs.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called that estimate "nonsense."
"I don't know what that is. I don't know what that looks like. If I can't put my fingers on it, if I can't touch it and if I can't get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and go to work there, then it's not happening, and that's the reality of a lot of people right now," Steele told Fox News.
While employers are shedding far fewer jobs than they were last year, the stimulus hasn't jolted hiring in the way it was advertised -- 49 states saw a net job loss in 2009, according to recent statistics. It's also contributed to record debt and deficits -- the national debt has reached nearly $12.4 trillion, while this fiscal year's deficit is expected to hit about $1.6 trillion. At the same time, President Obama is creating a panel to study ways to bring those numbers down.
The public is losing faith. A recent CBS News/New York Times survey showed only 6 percent of Americans believe the stimulus has created a significant number of jobs.
But here's the good news: The national economy as a whole is growing, a strong sign that the nation is not sliding back into recession. The jobless rate has pulled back from a high of 10.2 percent. Advocates of the stimulus argue that while unemployment is bad, the situation is better than it would have been without the stimulus -- a claim that can neither be proved nor disproved -- and that Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths, railing against the package while reaping its benefits in their home states.
"We acted because failure to do so would have led to catastrophe," Obama said Wednesday. "One year later, it is largely thanks to the recovery act that a second depression is no longer a possibility."
Biden said Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show" that the package is only "halfway" done. Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that state aid, a huge part of the package, has kept hundreds of thousands of state workers on the payroll and that the next step is to "translate" the GDP growth into more jobs. She and Biden both predict job growth by spring.
"We've seen a dramatic turnaround in this economy in the last year," Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine told Fox News on Wednesday. "We're not where we want to be yet, but it's great that we were able to ... stop the freefall in jobs."
But positive GDP growth isn't exactly the kind of thing that outside-the-Beltway Americans are going to notice on a day-to-day basis. Home values, 401k's, jobs and other real-world indicators are the proof many are looking for. While the stock market is back from the rock-bottom lows of early 2009, it's far from where it was before the crisis on Wall Street.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement Wednesday that the first anniversary of the stimulus is nothing to celebrate.
"In the first year of the trillion-dollar stimulus, Americans have lost millions of jobs, the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10 percent, the deficit continues to soar and we're inundated with stories of waste, fraud and abuse," he said. "This was not the plan Americans asked for or the results they were promised."
In Feb. 2009 Pres. Obama traveled the country pitching his Economic Stimulus Package idea.
Check out the videos and article (courtesy of CNN & MSNBC) below to analyze how the Stimulus has actually fared not only in Elkhart, IN but nationwide and why Obama only deserves a "C", actually at best a "C-", in keeping his promises.
If there were a report card for the promises President Barack Obama made a year ago in this struggling city in northern Indiana, he would probably get a C. It’s a passing grade, but it’s not the strong performance that people might have hoped for in a town with one of the highest jobless rates in the country.
One year ago, on Feb. 9, 2009, Obama went to Concord High School in Elkhart to promise jobs for the city and for the nation. He argued the case for the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which Congress would pass just four days later.
Now, a year later, some statements he made in that speech have proven true and a few have proven to be dubious. For several others, it’s too soon to judge.
Like the president himself, the Recovery Act and the Economic Recovery itself haven’t yet fully met expectations.
So, with unemployment near 10 percent and elections eight months away, congressional Democrats are reacting. House Democrats passed a second Stimulus, dubbed the “Jobs for Main Street Act.” At about $159 billion, it’s less than one-fifth the size of the stimulus enacted last February.
The Senate is set to begin action on its own job creation bill this week.
Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., whose district includes most of the city of Elkhart, voted for the first stimulus bill in 2009, but against the second bill last December.
"We still have a lot of ARRA funds to spend," Donnelly said. "We’re working non-stop to create jobs, but I want to make sure that we give the Stimulus Funds the opportunity to get out there, and be felt, and create jobs. I said, ‘Why don’t we just let the stimulus work its way through, rather than adding on even more debt?’”
Some argue the reason to not wait is the 14.8 million unemployed Americans as of January. The Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate dipped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent last month, but businesses shed 20,000 jobs.
Here are some of the statements Obama made in that speech, and how they're working so far.
Preventing more Job losses:
* Obama told his Elkhart, Ind. audience on last February that “if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, (but) all across the country.”
Since the president spoke on that day, more than 3 million jobs have been lost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job losses are no longer running at a pace of nearly 700,000 per month, as they were when Obama spoke in February, however.
“The Recovery Act has already funded about 2 million jobs across the country, and remains on track to meet the President’s goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year,” said Jim Gilio, White House spokesman for the Recovery Act.
Gilio said that direct stimulus spending (as opposed to tax cuts) for projects overall are expected to double in the first two quarters of 2010 and thus “there is even more employment bang for the buck to come.”
In Elkhart County, meanwhile, the unemployment rate has declined from 18 percent last February to 14.8 percent in December, the last month for which the BLS has local data.
But the labor force has shrunk in Elkhart, and around the nation, too. There were 4,365 fewer jobless in Elkhart County in December than there were when Obama spoke last February — a drop of 24 percent in the number of unemployed. But there were also 4,017 fewer people with jobs, a decline of 5 percent in the number employed.
Unemployment Benefits:
* Obama promised to help the jobless back in February with “an additional $100 per month in unemployment benefits that will go to more than 450,000 Indiana workers, extended unemployment benefits for another 89,000 folks who've been laid off and can't find work.”
The president has delivered on this promise.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, by the end of September, the Recovery Act will have paid out $58 billion in unemployment benefits, 17 percent of the total stimulus outlays.
* Obama predicted in his Elkhart speech that “the (Stimulus) plan that we put forward will save or create 3 to 4 million jobs over the next two years,” adding that “we'll create or save nearly 80,000 badly needed jobs for Indiana right here over the next couple of years.”
It will take until February 2011 to determine if the president was correct in his claims.
His own Council of Economic Advisors, in its Jan. 13 report, estimated that 48,000 jobs had been created in Indiana due to the Recovery Act. The CEA said the stimulus had “raised employment relative to what it would otherwise have been” by 1.5 million to 2 million nationwide.
The Obama administration’s view is that the Stimulus dollars are rippling through the economy: the public school teacher kept on the job due to Recovery Act money will spend her paychecks on groceries, car repairs, a new deck for her house — so the grocer, the car repair shop, and the carpenter all benefit from stimulus money. They will in turn spend their income on buying goods and services.
But Jackie Walorski, the Republican state representative whose district includes part of the city of Elkhart and southern Elkhart County, dismisses the Stimulus effect.
“Nobody was going to say ‘don’t bring money here if it’s available’ but it was a short infusion of cash,” she said. “It’s not a long-term fix and it hasn’t really produced a lot of sustainable, long-term tangible, counted jobs.”
Walorski is trying to unseat Donnelly in this November's election.
Donnelly defended the Stimulus by pointing to a $689,000 grant to the Heart City Health Center as stimulus money that had an immediate impact, allowing the clinic to hire a doctor and to serve more patients, and to a $39 million grant to Navistar to manufacture electric trucks in Wakarusa, a town just south of Elkhart.
Can you count the Jobs?
* Obama claimed in Elkhart last February that the federal government's Recovery.gov Web site “gives you a report on where the money is going in your community, how it's being spent, how many jobs (are) being created.”
He was somewhat wide of the mark.
Whatever the merits of Recovery.gov may be, it does not make the case that Obama and his aides are trying to make: that the combination of direct and indirect spending — the multiplier effect — has caused 1.5 million to 2 million jobs to be "created or saved."
Here's why:
Congress requires private-sector recipients of Recovery Act grants, contracts, and loans to submit their own estimates of the number of jobs created or retained by their funding.
But, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent auditing arm of Congress, explained, “neither individuals nor recipients receiving funds through entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, or through tax programs are required to report.”
Of the $173 billion in funds paid out by the end of last October, only 25 percent were covered by the Recovery Act’s reporting requirement.
That’s one reason why there’s a discrepancy between the 48,000 Indiana jobs that Obama’s economic advisors claim have been created or saved by the Stimulus, and the figure for jobs created or saved in Indiana on the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov Web site: 15,278.
* Obama promised in Elkhart “immediate tax relief for 95 percent of American workers.”
The Recovery Act has delivered on that pledge.
Although they aren’t as visible as the $10 million, ARRA-funded project to widen U.S. highway 33 in Elkhart, for example, the tax cuts in the Recovery Act last fiscal year and this fiscal year are 14 times larger than the transportation projects funded by stimulus money.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, 44 percent of the stimulus in FY 2009 and FY 2010 is in the form of tax cuts, ranging from a tax break for first-time home buyers to an $800 tax credit for married couples.
Mostly Private-Sector Jobs?
* The president pledged that “more than 90 percent of the jobs created under this Recovery Act will be in the private sector.”
That appears to be in some doubt, at least for now.
According to GAO, by Dec. 31, 2009, more than $78 billion in Recovery Act funds had gone to states and localities. More than three quarters of that was matching funds to the states to help pay for Medicaid, the insurance program for the indigent, and to the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund which helps states keep public school employees on the payroll.
The GAO said the Recovery Act’s Medicaid and education funds freed up money that the states otherwise would have had to spend from their own coffers. This allowed state and local governments to retain some employees that they otherwise would have let go.
States “most commonly reported using or planning to use these freed-up funds in fiscal year 2010 to cover increased Medicaid caseloads, maintain Medicaid eligibility levels, and finance general state budget needs,” the GAO said in a report last December.
Elkhart city officials estimate that to date $41 million in direct and indirect stimulus funding has created or saved 385 jobs in Elkhart, with the biggest single amount being the $14.3 million going to the Elkhart public schools.
That overpass the President Promised:
* The biggest unfunded stimulus request so far in Elkhart is a $65 million project to build a new downtown railroad overpass, the same one Obama mentioned in his Feb. 9 speech: “I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.”
Elkhart applied for stimulus money under the U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants program. The department will announce the winners of the grants in the next few weeks.
Plug-in Hybrids:
* Obama also promised his stimulus would include money “to develop the new battery technologies that will allow not just cars but potentially RVs as well to move into the next generation of plug-in hybrids.”
He returned to Elkhart last August to tout a $39 million grant to Navistar, which produces commercial and military trucks and designs and manufactures diesel engines for pickup trucks, vans and SUVs, among other things.
Navistar spokesman Roy Wiley said he could not estimate how many jobs the project would create since it “will depend upon initial daily production rates, among other things."
"When the grant was announced, we stated that our electric truck production would initially create 700 jobs, but not necessarily all in Elkhart County. And some will be suppliers,” he said.
Another vehicle manufacturer, the Norwegian firm THINK, is planning to make electric cars in Elkhart, with Recovery Act help.
According to company spokesman Brendan Prebo, THINK received a tax credit of $16.9 million under the Advanced Energy Manufacturing program. The firm has also applied for a loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program. THINK expects to create 415 manufacturing jobs in Elkhart by 2013. The plant begins operations in the first quarter of next year.
The Obama administration has pointed to the THINK tax break as a prime example of what the president meant when he said in Elkhart last year, “I think it's important for us to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in Elkhart.”
Prebo noted that THINK was looking at the United States as a manufacturing location prior to the announcement of the Recovery Act's incentives, but the ATVM program encouraged the company to build more vehicles in the U.S. sooner than it would have otherwise.
However, the Recovery Act “had very little impact on the selection of Elkhart specifically. I would attribute our decision to select Indiana almost wholly to the efforts of the state,” he said.
Building Schools:
* “We'll also put people to work rebuilding our schools,” Obama promised in Elkhart. “This school is a terrific school, but I know there's work to be done here.”
Public school construction is one place where Obama had hoped the Recovery Act would create jobs but where it hasn’t — at least not directly.
Obama referred three more times in the speech to what he saw as the need for stimulus money to pay for building and rehabilitating public schools.
The House version of the stimulus bill included $20 billion for school construction. But the Senate deleted those funds. This was done largely at the urging of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican whose vote was needed to get the 60 to pass the bill.
Collins’ decisive role last February was an early indicator that even with large Democratic majorities in Congress, Obama’s agenda for Elkhart and the rest of America would hinge on a few Republican Senators. From health insurance reform to a second stimulus bill, they remain as crucial today as they were last February.
High-speed rail projects in California, Florida and Illinois are among the big winners of $8 billion in grants announced Thursday by the White House -- the start of what some Democrats tout as a national rail-building program that could rival the interstate highways begun in the Eisenhower era.
President Barack Obama announced the awards during a town hall meeting in Tampa, Fla. -- a follow-up to Wednesday's State of the Union address that focused on getting Americans back to work. Thirteen passenger rail corridors in 31 states will receive grants, which are funded by the economic recovery act enacted last year.
Obama said focusing on building 21st Century Infrastructure projects is an important element of the country's Economic Recovery.
"It creates jobs immediately and it lays the foundation for a vibrant economy in the future," Obama said.
Though the administration bills the program as "high-speed rail," most U.S. projects won't reach the speeds seen in Europe and Asia. California's trains would be by far the fastest, exceeding the 200 mph achieved by some trains overseas.
Some of the money will go toward trains with top speeds of 110 mph, while other funds -- such as the $400 million allotted to Ohio to connect Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati -- will be for trains traveling no faster than 79 mph.
A half-dozen Cabinet members and other senior administration officials were fanning out across the country for rail events Thursday and Friday. The White House said rail projects will create or save thousands of jobs in areas including track laying, manufacturing, planning, engineering and rail maintenance and operations.
Obama told the crowd at Thursday's town hall that when the high-speed rail line connecting Tampa and Orlando is finished, "I'm going to come back down here and ride it."
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and members of Congress have acknowledged they expect much of the expertise and equipment to be supplied by foreign companies. Except for Amtrak's Acela line between Boston and Washington, there are no high-speed trains in the U.S. and no domestic high-speed rail industry.
The $8 billion investment is just a start. Last year, Obama asked Congress in his budget request for an additional $1 billion a year for five years. Congress for this year approved another $2.5 billion that remains to be awarded. And Obama is expected to ask for yet more rail funds when his budget is presented next week.
Also, LaHood has hinted that some of the $1.5 billion allotted in the stimulus plan for discretionary transportation projects may go toward high-speed rail.
Japan launched the first high-speed trains in 1964, and France and other European countries followed in the 1980s and 1990s. China has announced plans to expand its high-speed rail system to a network of more than 16,000 miles by the year 2020 at an estimated cost of $300 billion.
In the U.S., only the projects in California and Florida are planned to reach maximum speeds of 150 mph or more, what most transportation experts consider high-speed rail.
Projects awarded the largest grants include:
• California: $2.3 billion to begin work on an 800-mile-long, high-speed rail line tying Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles and San Diego.
• Florida: $1.25 billion to build a rail line connecting Tampa on the West Coast with Orlando in the middle of the state, eventually going south to Miami.
• Illinois-Missouri: $1.1 billion to improve a rail line between Chicago and St. Louis so that trains travel up to 110 mph.
• Wisconsin: $810 million to upgrade and refurbish train stations and install safety equipment on the Madison-to-Milwaukee leg of a line that stretches from Minneapolis to Chicago.
• Washington-Oregon: $590 million to upgrade a rail line from Seattle to Portland, Ore.
• North Carolina: $520 million for projects that will increase top speeds to 90 mph on trains between Raleigh and Charlotte and double the number of round trips.
By spreading the $8 billion among so many states, Obama is ignoring the advice of transportation experts and high-speed rail advocates who said the best way to build continuing political support for the program would be to concentrate on two or three grants large enough to get a high-speed line up and running. Once that happens, they reasoned, other parts of the country would lobby for more money to build their own lines.
Rep. John Mica of Florida, the senior Republican on the House transportation committee, complained that the Midwest lines awarded grants will achieve top speeds of only 110 mph and were "selected more for political reasons than for high-speed service."
Only one-quarter of Americans think the federal stimulus plan has helped the middle class, while a majority say it has helped bankers and investors, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday morning indicates that 25 percent of the public thinks the stimulus has benefited the middle class.
One-third of the people questioned think the stimulus has helped low-income Americans, with just over four in 10 saying the plan has benefited business executives. A majority, 54 percent, think the stimulus has helped bankers and investors.
"Opinions on the economic stimulus bill are colored by the perception that it has helped fat cats, but not ordinary Americans," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "It's possible that the belief that the stimulus bill helped bankers and CEOs is due to the public confusing the stimulus bill with the various bailout bills that were passed at roughly the same time last year."
The survey also indicates that one-quarter think the stimulus has helped people in their own community, with three in 10 saying it has hurt people in their community and 45 percent saying the plan has had no effect.
According to a CNN poll released Sunday, 56 percent of the public opposes the stimulus, with 42 percent supportive of the plan. Last March, just weeks after President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, a CNN survey indicated that 54 percent supported the program, with 44 percent opposed.
The program, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, attempts to stimulate the country's economy by increasing federal spending and cutting taxes, at a total cost to the government of $862 billion.
No Republicans in the House of Representatives and only three in the Senate voted for the bill.
The stimulus was initially thought to have a price tag of $787 billion, but the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday increased its forecast for how much the stimulus will add to the nation's deficit, raising its estimate by $75 billion.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted January 8-10, with 1,021 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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