Huckleberries Online

Costello: Obama Now Owns Economy

Posted by DFO

Nov. 7, 2009 6:04 a.m. • 4 comments

What too many people fail to recall, and in many cases I consider this willful amnesia, is that Obama’s sales pitch for the first stimulus package included a promise that, if passed, unemployment would rise no higher than 8 percent. Without the stimulus package, Obama’s economic team (which includes Romer), predicted that unemployment might rise as high as 9 percent. For reference, the official unemployment rate is now 10.2 percent.. And that’s an underestimate. When one considers the underemployed and those who have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is actually about 16 percent or 17 percent. The “recovery act is working exactly as intended.”Obama promised that he would create or save 3.5 million jobs. But recently the Obama administration boasted that it had “created or saved” a somewhat more modest 650,000 jobs, a number repeated uncritically over and over last weekend by the Obama-approved real news organization, CNN/Michael Costello, Lewiston Tribune. Full column below.

Question: Should Obama try to boost the economy by trying to pass another massive stimulus package?

Four comments on this post so far. Add yours!

Charlie on November 07 at 7:14 a.m.
Stop spending, period. Government cannot help the economy by continually going into debt. Someday Peter has to pay Paul and that is very soon. Congress is trying to turn the USA into a banana republic. Send the whole bunch off on one of those reality shows, “No Money Island.”
Arch_Druid on November 07 at 9:14 a.m.
No, the business interests that were directly or indirectly the recipients of stimulus money should now quit shipping jobs overseas, which is where much of the percentage of increased joblessness has come from and start rehiring Americans.

And Costello suffers from his own selective amnesia.
wheels on November 07 at 12:36 p.m.
No.Still don’t think we should have done the first one.
HonestGeorge on November 07 at 5:31 p.m.
If there had been no stimulus bill at all - esrtimates that I read indicated that we would have seen 5 to 7 bad years but with no debt. With a bill passed - estimates being banted about say that these restricted times of high unemployment will drag on for 3 to 5 years - but with a ton of debt. Maybe its time to back off from providing our money masters with another bonanza.

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.