Once again Democrats with the help of a few soft minded Republicans have passed a massive spending bill to help keep state and local governments from having to make the tough decisions it will take to balance their budgets.

According to the Associated Press:

The $26 billion measure would help states ease their severe budget problems and – advocates said – stop the layoffs of nearly 300,000 teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees.

Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah… the Stimulus Bill. Remember that massive spending program that was supposed to stimulate the economy and create jobs? But what it mostly did was plug holes in state and local government budgets.

For example, in California stimulus spending was reported to have saved around 100,000 jobs. But a closer analysis found that 90% of those were government jobs; this at a time when the Golden State has actually increased the number of government jobs.

The sad part is that because the funding was for only one year, many of those jobs are on the chopping block this year. Not so fast! Here come the liberals to the rescue.

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This past week White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, suggested that had the government not bailed out two failing auto manufacturers, “that’s a million more people that would have been on unemployment benefits.” As will be explained herein, this claim of the Press Secretary is wrong and misleading.

Mr. Gibbs also suggested that critics of the auto bailout wanted to walk away from a million jobs. Such talk is unfounded political speak. One would have a hard time finding any serious critic who advocated such a thing.

Quoting Mr. Gibbs,

“I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year and a half ago and wanted to walk away from a million, explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision and… whether they thought the decision they made 16 or 18 months ago, different than that of the president of the United States, whether they still stand by it.”

As one who sat in the so-called cheap seats, Mr. Gibbs, I never advocated walking away from a million jobs, but I absolutely do stand by the position that the GM/Chrysler bailout was a terrible thing to do and made no economic sense.

It seems that the President is unable to grasp – or unwilling to accept – some of the most basic economic principles surrounding this issue.

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Those of us who had to square dance in grade school may remember the old Virginia Reel; the caller commanding us to do the dos-a-do which was a spin move in one direction and then another.  That spin, however, doesn’t compare with the Obama Administration’s version of that dance move, in which the American people are told one thing, and then with dizzying speed, find out something else . . . the truth. Fortunately, most Americans are beginning to focus on the complete disconnect between the absurdity of the claims made by the Administration’s spinmeisters and the people’s own sense of reality.

The most breathtaking flight of fancy from Washington this past week was the full- court press by the President, Vice President, Chairperson of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and a whole host of Obama acolytes to proclaim that the Stimulus is working, that we’re “ahead of schedule” on job creation and that we’ve created  (or saved) millions of jobs.  The job saving claim is, in a strange way, irrefutable…sort of like a witch doctor saying if he hadn’t done his rain dance, the drought would have been worse.  As Democratic Senator Max Baucus complained to the White House “you created a situation where you cannot be wrong.  If 2,500,000 jobs are lost, you claim that without your stimulus program, 3,500,000 jobs would have been lost.  Taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone except one person were laid off, the Administration could claim that without its stimulus program, that person would have lost his job.”

There is, of course, a reason for this disciplined chorus of downright silly spin.  The Administration knew that data were about to be released from a variety of reliable sources revealing a further decline in manufacturing and retail activity, a further pull back in private sector hiring plans and industry investment plans, unemployment stubbornly stuck at just under ten percent and a further sinking of consumer confidence.  What’s a “fella” to do with elections coming and millions of jobs lost?  Dance the old dos-a-do and around you go, and claim the stimulus saved jobs.

This further sinking of consumer confidence is particularly significant and vexing to the Administration.  Consumer confidence is a consequence of the consumers’ sensitivity to what they see, hear and feel all around them.  It is reality. It can’t be manufactured, successfully manipulated (for very long), divined from the White House or spoon fed from a teleprompter.

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Last summer, I released a web video targeting Washington Democrats’ trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill and asking “where are the jobs?”  Today, on the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the “stimulus” into law, job-sniffing GOP bloodhound Ellie Mae still hasn’t found any jobs “created or saved” by the “stimulus.”  And I’m re-releasing the video for an encore performance.

The video features a down-home voiceover by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), and concludes with an appearance by me and Ellie Mae herself.

When Democrats rushed their massive 1,100 page, “stimulus” through Congress last year, they promised that unemployment would not rise above eight percent and that job creation would begin “almost immediately”.   But one year later, more than three million more Americans have lost their jobs, the deficit is set to hit a record shattering $1.6 trillion, and Administration reports on how many jobs were “saved or created” have been “riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions.”

By the metrics the Democrats themselves set, the “stimulus” hasn’t worked – it’s chock-full of wasteful government spending that’s funneled money to Congressional districts that don’t exist and claims of jobs “saved or created” were so exaggerated that the Administration quietly abandoned the metric at the end of last year.

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This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains how last year’s so-called stimulus was a flop – and also reveals why politicians are pushing for another big-government spending bill.

Interestingly, since last year’s stimulus was such a disaster, the redistributionists in Washington are calling their new proposal a “jobs bill.” But as I say in the video, this is akin to putting perfume on a hog.

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Recovery.gov has a vast and challenging mandate: “to allow taxpayers to see precisely what entities receive [stimulus] money in addition to how and where the money is spent.” To its credit, Recovery.gov offers a fascinating look into how government goes about spending $787 billion.

However, the website is troubled with inaccuracies, and these problems are undermining its credibility. Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Dave Obey agrees: “The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes.”

Given that stimulus award recipients are responsible for providing much of the information you see on Recovery.gov, it’s reasonable to expect some errors in the reporting process. Alas, some of the information seems to come out of thin air.

Phantom Congressional Districts.

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The federal website that tracks the final destination of the $787 billion “stimulus” package reported more than 640,000 jobs were created or saved by the funds as of October 30. A closer look at one state’s reporting, however, should cast serious doubt on that number’s veracity.

Washington state is listed as the third-highest job-generating state, according to www.recovery.gov, which records the number of jobs created or saved as 34,517.13. The problem is that at least 24,000 of those jobs were not really in jeopardy.

You read that correctly.

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Merry-Go-Round Museum receives federal funds

Federal funds pay to put on a ghostly journey to the most haunted places in Illinois

The shopping mall to nowhere; $5 million stimulus grant to heat an “almost-empty mall”

Stimulus grant pays to keep tabs on how often doctors and nurses wash their hands at hospitals in Maryland

Agency that misspent public funds on a casino junket and $700 worth of coffee and lost a child on a field trip slated to receive $159,000 in stimulus funds

Stimulus saves or creates jobs for illegal aliens; Company that the federal government knew was intentionally hiring hundreds of illegal immigrants awarded $6.7 million in federal contracts—including nearly $1million in stimulus money—during the past year

Many of the jobs counted as being “saved” by the federal stimulus program “definitely wouldn’t have been lost in the first place, and others might not have been lost at all”

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