AP: Obama's Spending on Roads & Bridges Did Nothing to Curb Unemployment
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, January 11, 2010, 4:31 AM
How this report slipped by the editor’s desk we will never know.
The AP reported this morning that the billions of government dollars that were spent on road projects and bridges did nothing to curb unemployment as Obama and democrats had promised.
But it did add to the national deficit.
The unemployment rate has spiked to 10% since President Obama took office despite his promise that it would not rise about 8%.
Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.
Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”
Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress that relies in part on more road and bridge spending, projects the president said are “at the heart of our effort to accelerate job growth.”
Construction spending would be a key part of the Jobs for Main Street Act, a $75 billion second stimulus to revive the nation’s lethargic unemployment rate and improve the dismal job market for construction workers. The House approved the bill 217-212 last month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., worked the floor for an hour; the Senate is expected to consider it later in January.
Now democrats want to do it again.
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Published February 8, 2012 at 8:42 pm - 63 Comments
squeaky commented:
OT from free republic……do you think gov patterson will be the only political hack to
increase his security? commentors at fr were
guess-timating $100,000 a head for each.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d10-New-York-Governor-Paterson-boosts-private-security-detail-while-state-patrols-shrink
Hermie commented:
Any ‘stimulus’ money that did go to the states, were for projects which were already going to be built. What happened was that money which was going to be spent from the states’ coffers, were diverted to other government spending. Places like California, Illinois, etc, were already strapped for cash because of their own spending foolishness. Not one new job was created, but state pols who needed to spend money on bike paths and other schemes got to ‘save’ their jobs.
jerryl commented:
lets not forget the tunnel for turtles the oney for polousys mouse tennis courts ect oh didnt the money going to those unknown zip codes create ghost jobs/
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jorgen commented:
You are always so negative: the unemployed can enjoy some nice bridges and lovely roads when going to the unemployment office. That must be worth something.
squeaky commented:
money going down a black hole. with the passing of the anniversary of the tsunami, i started thinking about the funding that was raised at the time and how large sums remained unspent. i seem to remember it being transferred to the un. translate that over to “stimulus” money and no real accounting. they do it cuz’ they can get away with it. and all we get is a tee-shirt and some paste beads…….
Lynn B commented:
I’m in construction. The majority of this business is NOT in roads and bridges (even though I realize infrastructure needs to be maintained). The majority of construction is in new housing stock to replace old, remodels, rehabs. This is exactly why the plan isn’t and won’t work. Part of the blame goes to the developers glutting the markets. The rest to the municipalities that let them get away with it. Too many builders speculating, too many plumbers, electricians, landscapers who were greedy and thought they were builders and General Contractors. In some ways they bear a lot of the blame as well. This may not be the popular view, but it is the truth. It will take years (5 to 10) to get this mess straightened out.
shibumi commented:
Something somewhat similar is happening in Michigan. The state gov. is giving lots of tax incentives (free $$) to the film industry to come here. Yes, it creates jobs- for a few weeks,and then they’re gone again. Such is the brilliant leadership in the Democratic party.
Neoavatara commented:
Tax incentives, especially short term ones, do little to spur the economy because business usually look at the long term…little fluctuations do little to affect their long term view.
In fact, the wavering of this administration is making the jobs outlook worse, not better.
http://neoavatara.com/blog/?p=9414
squeaky commented:
“Yes, it creates jobs- for a few weeks,and then they’re gone again. Such is the..” like oregon
and their 35 hour [or 1 week] jobs. if you aren’t sure how long a job will last you’re tighter with the money. all the little guys along the way
are closing up because the business isn’t there.
people who had landscapers cutting grass doing clean-up are doing their own. rather than getting haircuts, etc people are doing their own or stretching out the time between appointments. when the big jobs go down they take a lot of little guys with them.
pjean commented:
I just heard on the news that Barak Obama is considering a second stimulus to address just this very need. I certainly hope I hear someone hammering that a $787 billion dollar bill should have included appropriations for roads and bridges. Oh, yeah it did, but oops, we forgot to use it the way we told you we would.
Sojourner commented:
Yikes! Put down that shovel, BHO.. terrorists’ undies are hotter than job recovery under your gotta do it now, gotta rush it through, don’t read it Stimulus 1… check out the graph:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/01/unemployment-update.html
and these are the dimwits delivering us into health care…ugh!