And in doing so proves that Porkulus really isn’t a stimulus bill but a spending bill filled with every single pork project the Dems have wanted for the past 40 years:
President Barack Obama’s aides warned Americans on Sunday not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually.
Obama is due to sign the bill passed last week by Congress in Denver on Tuesday. It was the first major legislative victory of his young presidency, which could rise or fall with its success or failure.
“There will be signs of activity very quickly,” David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it’s going to take time for that to show up in the statistics. The president has said it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs used similar language on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’ve seen this economy has gotten worse just in the last few months. The acceleration in job loss probably means that this economy is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.
But isn’t a true stimulus bill supposed to blunt the worsening effect? Yes any stimulus bill will take time to work through the system, but this bill is so heavily back-loaded that no real effect will take place until just before Obama heads into his reelection cycle for 2012. Convenient.
Roger Kimball has much to say on Obama’s back-pedaling and notes how the Obama administration is now downgrading how many jobs this bill is supposed to create and save:
They haven’t even extracted the money yet and already they’re telling us poor suckers “not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually.”
Eventually? As in that “long run” about which Lord Keynes said, “in the long run we’re all dead”?
Something like that. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today said that “the economy is going to get worse before it gets better.”
And what about the 3.5 million jobs the current President of the United States said his spending orgy would “save or create.” (Save or create? What does that mean? How would you measure the saved jobs?))
Oops, now it’s 2.5 million by the end of 2010.
Barack Obama is a master manipulator for going into campaign mode and getting people hyped into thinking if the Congress didn’t pass his bill we’d experience an economic apocalypse that we could never get out of:
Mr. Obama’s analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they’re also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren’t likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a “recovery” package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy’s woes might produce better policies.
Today’s news of back-pedaling is consistent with his other handful of promises he didn’t keep, such as allowing a bill to be on the internet for 5 days so the American people can read it before it’s passed. They are simply sweet nothings he whispered in our ears but never intended to follow through on, proving himself to be a master bait-and-switch artist.
In other words, Barack Obama is a master conman.
Hat tip to Instapundit who says this:
No surprise: As was obvious to anyone who was paying attention, it was always about paying off special interests, not helping the economy.
Yup.
