STIMULUS WATCH: Unemployment eclipses fiscal jolt

[The Northerner]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The jobless got a hand. Taxpayers got tax breaks. And a sinking economy stabilized.

But the public's response to President Barack Obama's recession-fighting policies has been increasingly dreary. And the reason is simple: six months of unemployment above 9.6 percent.

"It doesn't yet feel like much of a recovery," Obama had to concede on Wednesday, even as he sought to promote his year-old massive economic stimulus bill.

Unemployment trumps all else. It provides a lens through which the public reads an economic narrative of bank bailouts, executive bonuses, expensive health care remedies and exploding debt.

In that environment, gross domestic product growth is an abstraction. Obama gets little credit for an economic turnaround under his watch. And Republicans seek political advantage by merely asking, "Where are the jobs?"

This week, on the anniversary of the stimulus plan, the White House is seeking redress. Obama and the president's political arm at the Democratic National Committee are casting the program — initially priced at $787 billion and now estimated at $862 billion — as a demonstrable success and its critics as hypocrites.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_bi_ge/us_stimulus_politics

[NoNothing]

1. Nonsense

It's racism. RACISM I TELL YOU!

[Drunken Irishman]

2. What a dumbass.

[Winterblues]

3. Your name says it all.

:shrug:

[vegiegals]

4. your post is not even partially funny.

[NoNothing]

5. It's not funny, it's angry sarcasm

I have been repeatedly excoriated for saying the exact same thing as the OP in the "all teabaggers are racist" threads.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. No. It's stupidity.

It's stupidity to marginalize the claim that there isn't racism out there or that many tea-baggers and anti-Obama fucks aren't racist.

Stop being stupid, please.

[we can do it]

10. All Teabaggers ARE IDIOTS and Racists

[fasttense]

7. The only stimulus we saw around here was tax cuts and unemployment benefit extensions..

Now that unemployment benefit extensions are going to stop, I suspect our current unemployment rate of 15% will go back up to 19%. (no more people spending their unemployment checks)

We use to have a 3% unemployment rate, before the bushes destroyed our economy. But then again, most people around here are just getting the fruits of what they voted for. They mostly just loved them some president bush, I'm sure they voted at least twice for the idiot in chief.

We have really seen nothing else around here (east TN). No roads being fixed, no new business, still lots of empty storefronts and abandon homes. Luckily for us, the grass and brambles move in quickly to hide abandon buildings.

I have noticed an increase in homeless people wandering around town. I wonder if they are part of the stimulus package?

I know Obama thinks he can't start an FDR type jobs program, but those programs sure made people believe the Democratic party was doing something for them.

Too bad President Obama and the Democratic party can't start hiring people out right through OPM and call it a jobs program. Because if they did do that, I'm sure people down here would vote for President Obama, even if he is black. They are that desperate.

For $150 billion he could put 10 million people to work for a year at minimum wage.

[OnlinePoker]

8. Actually, it will be the opposite

Quote "Now that unemployment benefit extensions are going to stop, I suspect our current unemployment rate of 15% will go back up to 19%. (no more people spending their unemployment checks)"

Once the people lose their unemployment benefits, BLS will drop them off the unemployment rolls faster than Bush could say tax cuts. They will be "discouraged" workers and won't be included in the labor statistics.

[tonysam]

9. Where in the article does it say extended UI benefits are going to stop?

It doesn't, and I doubt they will stop anytime soon. Congress knows better than that.

[OnlinePoker]

11. I wasn't quoting the OP

I was commenting on the previous poster's saying the unemployment rate would go up when benefits are stopped.