AMERICAN ISSUES PROJECT

Back in February, President Obama signed his stimulus bill into law. At the time, he declared that the $787 billion boondoggle was absolutely necessary to prevent the U.S. economy from going over the edge and into the abyss and becoming a catastrophe. With the so-called "stimulus," the president promised the unemployment rate would top out at 8 percent. Without the stimulus, he warned that the unemployment rate would hit 9 percent. The stimulus plan was implemented and six months out, the unemployment rate is now 9.5 percent and climbing. Even President Obama has had to admit that the worst is not yet over. He now is warning the American people that the unemployment rate will reach and probably exceed 10 percent. So much for his promise that the stimulus would keep us from going over the edge.

It's clear this bill is not creating the jobs this country needs to get us out of the economic hole we have found ourselves in, even though the president has tried his hardest to perpetuate the charade that it is working. He said on July 1st that since the bill was designed to make sure state governments did not lay off teachers, firefighters, and police that it did its job. That is clearly untrue based upon the reports that police and teachers are being laid off right now in cities all over the country. President Obama was trying to put a happy face on a clearly worsening situation, hoping that Americans fail to notice that the stimulus bill is not the solution he advertised it to be.

So far, much of the money is being used incorrectly. According to a new report form the Government Accounting Office, the vast majority of money sent to the states is being used to pay for Medicaid and to pay down their deficits. Even the money that has gone to infrastructure work such as highways has been spent on repaving projects that don't require a lot of workers.

Now that it has become clear to those who are willing to see the truth that the stimulus bill is failing to do what Obama said it would and, according to Mitch McConnell, is costing us $100 million a day in interest alone, what solutions are the brilliant minds who proposed the stimulus bill in the first place now recommending? Can you believe they are actually saying we need a second stimulus bill? Laura D'Andrea Tyson, advisor to President Obama, said the first one was "a bit too small." Apparently, failure the first time around simply is not good enough for them.

Nina Easton on Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier called it a $1 trillion dollar mulligan, and that's about as accurate a characterization as we're going to get. However, there's a more effective way to fix this debacle that Obama and his administration created. At this point, only 10 percent of the $787 billion has been spent. Rather than continuing with the stimulus spending that clearly does not create jobs, but only puts future generations on the hook, we should cancel the remaining ninety percent of the stimulus bill. Senator Jon Kyle has a piece in the National Ledger in which he says the same thing. Also, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports, 45 percent of the American people think we should just cut our losses and cancel the remaining 90 percent of the stimulus as well.

Instead of continuing to flush Americans' hard earned money down the toilet, there are a number of strategies that have been proven to actually create jobs, and if job creation is really the goal of this administration, then it will use these time-tested and proven strategies. Slash the capital gains tax. Cut business taxes. America's business tax is the second highest in the world, which makes it difficult for American businesses to compete globally. For goodness sake, don't eliminate deferral of US companies' double taxation on income abroad. Better yet, eliminate the double taxation all together. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Don't pass the appalling Waxman-Markey bill, a.k.a. Cap and Trade, as it will only accelerate the job losses we already have by increasing energy costs on every single American. These are just a few ideas that will set our economy on fire, but they won't work unless they are implemented.

It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winning economist to understand that we won't get out of this recession by spending so much money that we quadruple our deficit. Common sense tells us this will put us on the fast track to national bankruptcy. It's not too late, however, for the administration to apply some common sense and reverse course. Not only will it help our economy and create jobs, but also, it will improve the president's job approval numbers.

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