Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times:
If there's any comfort for Democratic legislators in this landscape, it's the possibility that the angst-ridden health care debate may matter less to their re-election prospects than anyone expects. Amid the town-hall tumult in August, Obamacare looked like 2010's defining issue. But when you talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill today, it sounds as if health care will play a relatively modest role in the campaign they plan to run.
If a bill passes, they'll attack the Democrats for reorganizing the nation's health care sector instead of putting Americans back to work. If the legislation fails, they'll attack the Democrats for trying to reorganize the health care sector instead of putting Americans back to work.
Either way, though, they expect the jobs issue to matter much, much more than the specific details of health care reform.
It's not entirely clear that unemployment will matter "much, much more" than the Democrats' health-care legislation, but it will obviously be a very big issue in 2010. Here are just a few articles from around the country that Republicans are highlighting to show that the stimulus package isn't doing what President Obama said it would do.
The Detroit Free Press: "Car orders not lifting auto jobs"
The hundreds of millions of dollars the federal government spent to buy thousands of vehicles from metro Detroit's three automakers under the $787-billion federal stimulus act didn't retain or keep a single job, a Free Press analysis shows.
The Greenville News in North South Carolina: "State's stimulus job count questioned"
The Greenville Housing Authority "saved or created" 118 jobs by use of federal stimulus money, according to the Obama administration.
Not bad for an agency that has 35 employees.
Those jobs, like many of the 8,147 jobs listed by the feds as having been saved or created in South Carolina through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, weren't actually permanent positions.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution: "Georgia jobs created by stimulus dollars overstated"
At issue is the federal government's reporting of jobs created or preserved by the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The stimulus Web site, recovery.gov, says 24,681 jobs have been created or saved so far in Georgia, and 640,329 nationwide.
But an AJC examination of records posted on the Web site calls into question the accuracy of the numbers. The AJC found:
â— An Augusta agency reported creating 68 jobs even though the work has not started yet.
â— A private contractor counted the same 10 jobs six times, erroneously reporting 60.
â— A Head Start organization in LaGrange reported 77 jobs based on raises it gave its employees with the money.
The AJC found the errors after downloading records from recovery.gov, examining those that reported the most jobs, and contacting recipients of the federal funds to verify their job numbers.
There is no doubt much more muckraking to be done on the Obama administration's claims of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus package. And the national media are beginning to catch on. This just in from ABC News:
The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News.
The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data."
One recipient -- Talladega County of Alabama -- claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created from only $42,000 in stimulus funds.
