Their case is not helped buy new information and a consensus among many economists now is that the stimulus was actually a good thing. What those who are so loudly showing their most righteous indignation at the unemployment numbers is that the economy late last year was completely crashed and that before anything was done we needed to "stop the bleeding":
The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to "save or create" about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In fact the stimulus appears to have helped states avoid cuts and layoffs:
Much federal infrastructure money has gone not to new job-creating projects but to finance existing plans, which otherwise would be unaffordable to states.
So the stimulus has not "supercharged" transportation construction as was hoped, said Charles Gallagher, an asphalt company owner, speaking for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, but it has nonetheless been "a welcome Band-Aid" to offset state cuts.
"Many contractors across the nation have been able to sustain, if not add to, their work force," he said.
Economists are now saying that Republican proposals to stop the stimulus would be a mistake:
Economists said Republicans’ recent proposals to rescind unspent money would be a mistake.
James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Company, said: "If we could be absolutely convinced that the growth we’re getting is for reasons beyond the help the government is giving, then that would make sense. But the fact is we can’t be certain of that."
I think that many critics need to stop and think about what really caused our economy to collapse and the unemployment to occur. Nobody was going to be able to come into the White House and almost immediately fix the cosiderable damage to the economy that was incurred over many years. Before the stimulus even had a chance to start healing the economy it first had to stop the bleeding and hopefully that is happening. Without the stimulus, things would be much worse
Which brings us to a recurrent theme in the American political discourse. I simply do not understand why it is important to some to continue doling out corporate welfare as those very corporations ship our middle-class jobs overseas to take advatage of virtual slaves. I do not understand why it is important to blow up and rebuild a country that did not attack us over and over again.
But what really confounds me the most is how folks who desperately want all those things done will immediately cry "Socialism" if we even speak of investing in America and her people. It is not "socialist" to privitize profit and publicize loss but it is to provide infrastructure, jobs, healthcare, and government services to our own working people who pay the taxes to fund all of these wars and corporate welfare.
They are the ones who are hurting out here in the real world. They have been taken advantage of time and time again. I think what Conservatives hate the most is that we did invest in America and it did stop the bleeding that Republican policies of greed created. Unlike them, I believe if we invest in our own country and people we will always see positive results.
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