And this is after the Democrats and Obama have spent 787 billion on their so called stimulus package. The Congressional Budget Office reports that only 21 billion of the package has resulted in contracts being let. Other smaller stimulus packages have worked much better. So what is wrong with this one?
The problem with the stimulus package is that it really isn't a stimulus package. It was a package of items the Democrats had wanted for a long time that they dressed up as a stimulus package to get it passed. It is that old "lipstick on a pig" thing again.
Much of the stimulus money is going to "green energy" projects. That money will result in very few jobs for the first year, if not years. And the multiplier effect of the funds allocated for green energy will be minimal.
Another big portion of the money is going for transportation. The Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats told people the transportation projects would be "shovel ready"... well, in many if not most of the cases those "shovel ready" project's are anything but. Take the "Hot Lanes" projects in Santa Clara County of California. The money is allocated but the California Dept. of Transportation has not approved these projects. And then the contracts will need to get let and the designing completed. It could easily be early 2011 before these "shovel ready" projects get going.
The truth is that infrastructure projects take years to get going in today's regulatory environment. It is not like during the depression. When Roosevelt became president he was able to get the "Blue Ridge Parkway" started, at twelve different location, within 4 months. And they built the Hoover Dam at breakneck speed.
So allot of these stimulus monies are being wasted. Not that we don't need a lot of these projects they will fund, but we need true stimulus projects even more.
If the federal government really wanted to stimulate the economy with infrastructure projects they should have gone about it completely differently. They should have put out money to patch every pothole in the country. And how about every road project in the country under $1,000,000. These are small with few regulatory issues. The feds should also approve 2 or 3 times as many projects as there is money for and then only award the money to the projects that are truly shovel ready on a "first come first serve" basis. The ones that are late would be left out.
And what about tax breaks and tax refunds. Refunds have had a questionable track record in the last 10 years but there is no doubt about target tax breaks. They can work fast.
All and all, Obama and the Congressional Democrats have completely dropped the ball on getting the economy moving again.
