Is This What Lincoln Calls “Stimulus?”

Wednesday, 27 May 2009 19:00

Little Progress 100 Days After Lincoln Helped Pass Massive Spending Bill

WASHINGTON - After voting for the Democrats' massive stimulus bill, U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and her colleagues were confronted with a number of discouraging news reports this week outlining the lack of progress resulting from the bill 100 days later.

Since the passage of the Democrats' so-called stimulus legislation, Arkansas unemployment numbers have continued to increase from 6.4 percent in February to 6.5 percent in April.

?Senator Lincoln helped ram this bill through Congress and the Democrats have voted to spend trillions of dollars in just four months. Unemployment is on the rise in Arkansas and nationwide ? is this what Blanche Lincoln defines as 'stimulus?'" asked National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson.

Some notable stories marking the first 100-days of the Democrats' stimulus bill:

USA TODAY: States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe ... [W]ith few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System.

POLITICO: President Barack Obama came to Nevada to tout the release of a new report on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, "100 Days, 100 Projects." But none of them are in Nevada - [T]he overall sense in the state is that stimulus money is just beginning to trickle in and so its benefits so far aren?t all that tangible, according to news reports in the Las Vegas Sun.

REUTERS: Obama's top economic adviser, Cristina Romer, told MSNBC she was optimistic about some improving economic indicators, that it appeared ... we are nearing the bottom ... of the economic trough and that growth may well resume by year's end. "The gold standard is going to be jobs numbers. And realistically, we're not going to see us adding jobs for a while," she said.

AP: The White House job claims are difficult to verify because they are based on estimates of how bad the economy might have been without the stimulus rather than actual employment data. The country has lost 1.3 million jobs since February...

MCCLATCHY: "Only a small part" of the nation's $787 billion economic stimulus had been spent through the end of last month, according to congressional analysts, despite the Obama administration's boasts Wednesday that the plan is a big success.

ABC: The booklet also mentions the "police academy graduates in Ohio" whose graduation ceremony President Obama attended in March, heralding how the stimulus enabled the city of Columbus to hire 25 cadets. But this week Police Chief Walter Distelzweig told the Columbus Dispatch that unless residents approve a tax increase, those 25 cadets face the real possibility of layoffs.