Wednesday, February 17, 2010
NBC story lets Republicans off the hook, Media Research Center complains:From tonight's NBC Nightly News: (excerpts, emp add) LISA MYERS: Today the President said that the much-maligned stimulus package staved off economic catastrophe.
MYERS: Many economists agree that the $787 billion package of infrastructure spending, tax cuts and aid to states has created jobs and helped pull the economy out of a deep recession. Three economic research firms estimate that 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs have been created so far, with more gains projected this year. And painful job losses have slowed dramatically. Last January the economy was hemorrhaging jobs at a rate of 780,000 a month. That slowed to 20,000 last month. Economist Mark Zandi, who advises both Republicans and Democrats, says the stimulus was absolutely vital, but not perfect.
MARK ZANDI, MOODY'S ECONOMY.COM: The stimulus was effective. It helped the economy. We are out of recession into recovery, but it wasn't as effective as it could have been. The bang for the buck was not as large as it should have been.
MYERS: The White House had forecast the stimulus would keep unemployment from going above 8 percent. Instead, the jobless rate soared to 10.2 percent last fall and stood at 9.7 percent last month. Economist Kevin Hassett says the costly package actually hurts in the long run.
KEVIN HASSETT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: The administration decided to give us a sugar high last year rather than to fix something that was broken. The problem is that we still have to fix the broken things and now we don't have any money. The stimulus wasn't as effective as it could have been because about half was composed of Repubican-demanded tax cuts. And for a critique, Myers presents Kevin Hassett, author of DOW 36,000 and a thoroughly mendacious figure. But the conservatives at the Media Research Center aren't satisfied with that and, instead, complain about reports on NBC (and CBS, ABC) that said the stimulus bill helped the economy: On the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration's “stimulus” spending bill, ABC, CBS and NBC all eagerly corroborated the White House's claims about how it “saved or created” many jobs and staved off economic disaster, though they all offered a range of numbers and definitions ... And appear to be irritated by this from CBS: Though “many independent economists put the number of jobs saved or created at about 1.8 million,” [CBS' Chip] Reid relayed that “to the great frustration of the White House, most Americans simply refuse to believe it. In a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, a mere 6 percent said the stimulus has created jobs.” Reid's culprit: “That skepticism due in part to a relentless campaign by Republicans who say the stimulus is a bloated, big-government failure.”
posted by Quiddity at 2/17/2010 07:41:00 PM
5 comments
What amazes me is that a full 6% of Americans believe that this represents the creation of 1.6 to 1.8 million new jobs.
Anonymous wrote, "What amazes me is that a full 6% of Americans believe that this represents the creation of 1.6 to 1.8 million new jobs."
What amazes meM is that you don't understand that the proper comparison isn't to zero change in the number of jobs, but rather to what would have happened w/o the stimulus package.
Translation -- comparing the results to the stated goals and predictions of the administration shows the program to be a complete, utter failure, just as the Republicans said it would.
So the "proper" comparison is to compare the failed program to a non-existent hypothetical situation that cannot be measured or quantified.
How about this. If we had a Republican administration, and had had $700 million in tax cuts instead of $700 million in deliberate government waste, we would have exactly the same debt to show for it, but a hell of a roaring economy instead of the economic implosion we have under Obama and the idiot Democrats.
It's amazing that anyone doesn't understand that, much less 6 of every 100 Americans.
"...the economic implosion we have under Obama and the idiot Democrats."
Who was in charge when the economy imploded? If you say it was anyone other than Bush/Cheney at the helm from 2001 to 2009, you're the idiot (as well as a goddamned liar).
Massive tax cuts for the rich combined with Wall Street malfeasance and an unnecessary war in Iraq caused this disaster, you moron. Stop drinking the GOP's Kool Aid and wise up.
The economy began to implode when the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 and the implosion became complete when the Democrats took the White House in 2009. If you chart the deficit, Bush and the Republicans had virtually succeeded in bringing the deficit under control and were well on their way to returning the government to a surplus state until the catastrophic Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007 signaled to the market that fiscal responsibility was over and crashed the economy.
The Iraq war had nothing to do with it. But, if you must bring it up, Obama's stimulus spending binge has cost more in one year than was spent on the entire Iraq war. And to less effect.
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