Obama Continues to Violate His Own ‘Stimulus’ Law by Not Releasing Quarterly Reports

[CuteOldGuy]

I know. It's Obama. He doesn't have to follow even his own laws if he doesn't want to. No one cares. Most corrupt president ever, but no one cares. *Sigh*

Here's the article, anyway:

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately? In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved. Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck.

Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.

Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen. Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months. It reads:

“In consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers shall submit quarterly reports to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives that detail the impact of programs funded through covered funds on employment, estimated economic growth, and other key economic indicators.”

(The head of the Council of Economic Advisors, currently Alan Krueger, is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and works in the Executive Office of the President. He is the president’s chief economic adviser.)

Indeed, the old reports that the administration released begin, “As part of the unprecedented accountability and transparency provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [the ‘stimulus’], the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was charged with providing to Congress quarterly reports on the effects of the Recovery Act on overall economic activity, and on employment in particular.”

Section 1513 further specifies, “The first report…shall be submitted not later than 45 days after the end of the first full quarter following the date of enactment of this Act….The last report required to be submitted…shall apply to the quarter in which the [Recovery Accountability and Transparency] Board terminates under section 1530.” Section 1530 declares, “The Board shall terminate on September 30, 2013.”

In other words, the Obama administration is required by law to submit quarterly reports on the “stimulus” through the third quarter of 2013. By now, it was supposed to have released fourteen such reports. It has released only eight. The last one covered the period ending in June 2011. That’s right — 2011.

With only 58.6 percent of Americans currently employed — down 2.4 percent from the time of Obama’s first inauguration — it’s not surprising that the Obama administration doesn’t really want to fulfill it legal responsibilities and release subsequent reports on its failed “stimulus.” However, it hardly seems fair — to use one of Obama’s favorite words — that the rich and (extremely) powerful think that they can choose whether or not to abide by the laws they spearhead and sign, while the rest of us are forced to obey them.

Perhaps it’s time for the rich and powerful to do their fair share and obey the laws that they enforce against others. And perhaps this is something that the House of Representatives might want to look into.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...ts_697896.html

[Chica Chaser]

Accountability? Government accountability? Laws and rules? Pfffft!
But I'm sure they will get around to the reports...eventually. Probably around the same time as Obie submits his budget.

[CJohnny54]

Account for what the fuck you used and did ......

[SEE3772]

[CJohnny54]

What rock did you craw out from under?

[Texas Contrarian]

Any sort of reasoned estimates of the "stimulus" package's job creation effects got progressively worse because all the extravagant claims got harder and harder to sell.

Even the claim of one job "created" or "saved" per $317K of "stimulus" is very hard to defend. That corresponds to over 2.6 million jobs. You'd have to hang out regularly in places like the Princeton University faculty lounge to believe any of that.

Most people would be astonished if they understood what sort of ridiculous B.S. gets recycled into claims supporting the number of jobs created or "saved," or other economic benefits arising from specific actions. The famous Blinder-Zandi paper claimed a large number of jobs created by all the interventions, but rolled Fed policy in with fiscal stimulus in order to arrive at their conclusions. The "job creation" numbers were arrived at by utilizing mathematical models which don't remotely reflect the real world. Essentially, the authors claimed that a certain number of jobs were created by each spending input simply because their models said that number of jobs would be created!

Mark Zandi is the guy who famously claimed a fiscal multiplier of 1.73 for SNAP dispensation. That's presumably why Nancy Pelosi claimed that food stamps were a very effective "jobs program." Needless to say, that's ridiculous on its face. Much reasearch by Harvard's Robert Barro and others has shown that the real fiscal multiplier for most forms of social spending is generally no greater than 0.5, and in many cases is significantly closer to zero.

There's no question that throwing around that much money created some jobs, although no one can determine how many. That's just not the sort of thing you can mathematically model or quantify in any effective way. And money sent to states undoubtedly prevented the layoffs of some workers who otherwise would have lost their jobs. But the number of people who were affected is open to question, and it appears that a lot of gross exaggeration has come into play.

I believe that the number of jobs created or "saved" is likely to be in the 400,000 range, which means that the cost per job may have been as high as $2 million.

It's pretty hard to characterize that as getting a lot of bang for the buck.

Is it any wonder that early supporters of the "stimulus" want to change the subject?

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

I know. It's Obama. He doesn't have to follow even his own laws if he doesn't want to. No one cares. Most corrupt president ever, but no one cares. *Sigh*

Comrade StupidOldLyingFart's daily, 3-step reminder to himself:

Bitch! Moan! Repeat!

Fuckin' Commies!

[CuteOldGuy]

Can't face the facts again, eh, BTLD?

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Can't face the facts again, eh, BTLD?

As a matter of fact, I understand the "facts" completely!

Comrade StupidOldLyingFart's daily, 3-step reminder to himself:

Bitch! Moan! Repeat!

Fuckin' Commies!

[Laz]

I would love to see a report on the effectiveness of the stimulus. If it worked, great, Obama can brag about it. If not it would be good to see the details so that future attempts to spend money on the things that did not work can be stopped. While there is not much I like about Obama's policies this is not about him. All politicians need to be accountable to the public for the money they spend and they also need to follow the law just like they expect everyone else to. How much slack does the IRS give people if reports are not filed? Maybe we need to create fines the politicians have to pay out of their own pocket when they fail to follow the law.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by bigtex

As a matter of fact, I understand the "facts" completely!

I don't think so, but I don't see you defending this either.

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

I don't think so, but I don't see you defending this either.

Then let me break it down to the least common denominator for you:

Comrade StupidOldLyingFart's daily, 3-step reminder to himself:

Bitch! Moan! Repeat!

Fuckin' Commies!

[Chica Chaser]

Pointless. Carry on

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

Pointless

Most of it is!

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

Carry on

Will do, Sarge!

BTW, enjoy your week off. We'll keep the light on for you!

[Sidewinder]

Originally Posted by Laz

I would love to see a report on the effectiveness of the stimulus. If it worked, great, Obama can brag about it. If not it would be good to see the details so that future attempts to spend money on the things that did not work can be stopped. While there is not much I like about Obama's policies this is not about him. All politicians need to be accountable to the public for the money they spend and they also need to follow the law just like they expect everyone else to. How much slack does the IRS give people if reports are not filed? Maybe we need to create fines the politicians have to pay out of their own pocket when they fail to follow the law.

You will never see such a report.

If the "stimulus" ("porkulus" seems a better word) was working, Obama et al would be trumpeting it from the rooftops, 24x7, in stereo. The fact that they are not at the moment blowing such trumpets would seem to speak for itself, as loudly as the trumpets would.