As President Obama travels around the country at taxpayer expense to peddle his newest stimulus proposal, his Council of Economic Advisors has yet to release its 8th Quarterly Report on Obama’s first stimulus — you know, the one that cost a cool $787,000,000,000.00. Perhaps this is just a coincidence.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will be moving forward this week on a piece of President Obama's failed jobs bill--a $35 billion provision of state aid for education and first responders. But Reid told reporters today that some of the education money may not go to actually saving the jobs of teachers.
ABC News reports that during an interview with David Muir yesterday concerning President Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner didn’t dispute a Harvard economist’s estimate that each job in the White House’s jobs plan would cost $200,000, but said” — mysteriously —“the pricetag is the wrong way to measure the bill’s worth.”
Even as problems grow for Solyndra, the solar energy manufacturing firm that got a hefty stimulus-backed loan before going bankrupt earlier this month, the Department of Energy continues to issue large loans to companies.
Two big stories are out tonight on the blossoming scandal involving failed solar panel company and stimulus funds recipient Solyndra. First, the Washington Post reports that the White House pressured the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to speed up the approval process for Solyndra's $535 million loan:
First, we had the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA. Now, we have the American Jobs Act, or AJA.
These are bold new ideas! That’s why the president needed a primetime address before Congress to introduce it. And of course, they’re not calling it a stimulus. It’s a jobs act.
On CNBC this morning, Paul Ryan discussed President Obama's stimulus speech and explained the problem with most of Obama's proposed tax cuts: They're temporary.
"The payroll tax cut that, to me, is not a bad idea. It's always good to let people keep more of their own money," Ryan said. "But it's no substitute for fundamental tax reform--for certainty. It's temporary stuff."
In a speech to a joint session of Congress this evening, President Obama introduced a $450 billion stimulus proposal plan he claimed would get Americans back to work. "There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything."
Solyndra, the stimulus-backed green energy firm filing for bankruptcy, had a fairly cozy relationship with the Obama administration. The company's Fremont, California plant was the setting for a May 2010 speech by President Obama, where he touted the stimulus and its development of green manufacturing. Here's part of what the president had to say then (emphasis added):
At his jobs address to a joint session of Congress next Thursday, President Barack Obama might want to skip any mention of his green jobs initiative. The Bay Area's NBC affiliate reports that a high-profile green start-up called Solyndra, which benefited from federal loans from the stimulus package, announced it would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy:
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released an important new study on the hiring practices of firms that used stimulus funds. It's fairly comprehensive, based on over 1,300 surveys of managers and employees. There's been very little good empirical data on the stimulus thus far, so the study contains a lot of valuable insights. Among the findings by authors Dan Rothschild and Garrett Jones:
On MSNBC's Morning Joe today, economist Jeffrey Sachs, a self-professed supporter of Barack Obama in 2008, said the president has no plan to save the economy and that "there's never been a plan."
"The quintessential image, sadly, of an administration that I supported and hoped for much better, is the president waiting by the phone to hear what Congress calls to tell him," said Sachs. "It doesn't work in this country that way. It's not a matter that it's August. It's a matter that it's August 2011."
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