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07-26-2017, 04:37 PM
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Originally Posted by Guest
Obama blew his chance. Don't you remember the $1 trillion shovel ready stimulus package. It disappeared into the black hole of political slush funds. You're thinking about the 2nd go around he asked for, but never saw.
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Actually not true.....the link below gives you a dollar by dollar accounting of where the money went; not a political slush fund among the spending.
The Stimulus Plan: A Detailed List of Spending - ProPublica
This link to a Times article critiquing the program can explain some of the difficulty involved...
"THE polarized rhetoric of the 2012 election cycle presents voters with a false choice of whether the government can create jobs or should just get out of the way. The real debate should be about which policies work and which don’t.
I spent three years reporting on the $840 billion stimulus plan that the Obama administration pushed through Congress in 2009. My conclusion: government can create jobs — it just doesn’t often do it well.
The stimulus — a historic package of tax cuts, safety-net spending, infrastructure projects and green-energy investments — certainly did a lot of good. As the economists Alan S. Blinder and Mark Zandi have noted, it’s one of the key reasons the unemployment rate isn’t in double digits now.
How the Stimulus Fell Short - The New York Times
This is part of that article and details the problem with the actual definition of "shovel ready"
" The problem with most of the projects was that the Obama administration and Congress had defined “shovel ready” too broadly. The original plan called for putting “shovels in the ground” within 90 days. But when the rules were written, states ended up with 120 days to have their road projects “approved.” It often took six more months to a year before most of the projects were under construction."
It helped a lot, the Stimulus bill and was needed, but to say it went to "disappeared into the black hole of political slush funds" is very very short sighted and uninformed.
I am not about to defend Obama on this at all, but recall the spending was done by a completely Republican controlled congress. They both, administration and congress share blame, but it was not sent to some political slush fund. That kind of talk is usually reserved for the extreme websites on both sides.
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