Just a little over one year ago, when President Obama touched down in Denver to sign a massive federal spending bill to stimulate the economy, we wrote: “For the sake of the country, we hope our concerns over the ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’ are misplaced.”
One year later, it’s still tough to judge. But one thing is clear: We don’t need another one.
The more than $800 billion in spending, approved in haste in Obama’s early days, helped prop up state governments across the country, including Colorado, where lawmakers have trimmed more than a $1 billion from the state budget. That’s a good thing. It bought states some time for the economy to recovery. However, it only delayed the inevitable. The economy hasn’t recovered quickly enough and states very soon will be forced to balance their budgets without the largess of the federal government.
The money also helped launch numerous important public improvement projects across the country, including some much-needed road projects here in Colorado. Yet money also was squandered on special-interest, pork projects that did nothing to stimulate the economy.
Obama and others have bragged about how the stimulus created or saved millions of jobs. The boast of “saving” jobs is a dubious, at best, and we have yet to see substantive proof that all of that money has created a meaningful number of new jobs.
Obama early on claimed if Congress didn’t act swiftly and approve the bill, unemployment could reach 8 percent. It spent most of the past year hovering around 10 percent.
While some leading economic research firms now estimate the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far, retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh this past week said: “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”
Criticism such as that, along with the high jobless rate, is why Congress is now turning toward a second stimulus bill, couched as a jobs bill.
Democratic Reps. Jared Polis and Betsy Markey both told us last week that they were cool to the idea of a jobs bill, especially if it involves spending repaid TARP, or Troubled Asset Relief Program, funds.
“I don’t think we need a jobs bill for the sake of a jobs bill,” Polis said.
It will take years to measure the true impact of the stimulus bill, especially since part of the money hasn’t even been spent.
Congress must not rush into a second stimulus bill. Instead, taxpayers deserve a reasonable plan for eventually trimming the federal debt, which is swiftly becoming unsustainable.
It’s time to go cold turkey and start to wean ourselves off the excesses of the federal government.
