$800 Billion Stimulus Package Doled Out Based on Politics; Districts with High Unemployment Were Shafted

“How is stimulus money allocated?  Unemployment isn’t a factor, but politics is,” found George Mason University researcher Veronique de Rugy in a recent study.

Districts where people are struggling and unemployment is high are not receiving any more money than those in which unemployment is low, even though a stated purpose of the $800 billion stimulus package was to help the unemployed.  But politics mattered in doling out federal funds.  And “Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts.”

Not that the stimulus was very effective even in districts where it was spent.  The number of jobs the government claims to have created is actually going down as the spending continues to rise.

The president wants a new $267 billion stimulus package, on top of the $800 billion one that passed earlier.  Obama claimed that the $800 billion stimulus package was needed to avert “irreversible decline.” But the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the stimulus package will actually cut the size of the economy in the long run.

Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent . . . The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent.”

The stimulus package destroyed thousands of real world jobs in America’s export sector.  Meanwhile, the administration claimed credit for creating thousands of imaginary jobs in non-existent congressional districts.  The stimulus is full of wasteful spending.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama promised a “net spending cut,” but as soon as he was elected, he proposed massive spending increases.