The Obama Economy is a Purposeful and Planned Disaster

RUSH: Christina Romer. There’s a story here in The Politico. ‘Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Sunday that President Barack Obama was ‘subdued’ and ‘disappointed’ upon learning of Friday’s jobless number and that the administration favors further government action.’ Of course he does, because he’s not ‘subdued’ and he’s not ‘disappointed’! This is the plan. You don’t do this accidentally. You don’t do what Obama’s doing out of naivete. You don’t do this mistakenly — and if you are mistaken about it, you realize much sooner than now that it’s a mistake and you reverse it. You don’t double down on it.

”The sense that we need to do more is overwhelming,’ Romer told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ ‘We know there are things that have been working in the Recovery Act that are expiring, like some of the provisions for longer unemployment benefits.” That’s creating jobs? There’s nothing about extending unemployment benefits that’s going to create one job. Obama has the bankers up there. He’s demanding that they lend, and some of the bankers (I’m told) in the meeting said, ‘Mr. President, small businesses are not asking us for money. They don’t want to borrow. You’re talking to the wrong people. They’re not interested in borrowing — and you know why, Mr. President? ‘Cause they don’t know what the rules of the game are going to be. They don’t know if your health care is going to pass. They don’t know if cap and tax is going to pass. They don’t know if tax increases will pass.

‘They have no idea what their expenses are going to be, government expenses,’ meaning tax increases, ‘and further regulation. That’s why they’re not borrowing.’ It’s why they’re not hiring. Obama knows this. All those jobs summits, ladies and gentlemen, at the White House? They were just academic displays, tricks designed to make people think action was being taken. Listen to this quote from Christina Romer: ‘Romer said the country is ‘on a path of steady progress’: ‘The real question is going to be: Is it going be strong enough to really add a lot of people back into employment, and that is what we’re focusing on. … I think we are getting closer to stability in employment. The next step is, obviously, to finally start adding jobs. … The big variable in all of this is the private sector. The government has been doing a lot to hold up demand — the Recovery Act has been incredibly important in that regard.’ This woman knows better, too, by the way. She knows that everything she’s saying here is BS.

The big variable in this is the private sector? The big variable in this is the private sector if they would simply get out of the way, stop punishing people for engaging in entrepreneurism and for succeeding in the process. Just get out of the way. What have you done? The private sector is the big variable here? What have you done to the private sector, Ms. Romer, besides target it? I don’t know. Here, let me tell you this. The first year of Obama’s presidency, he focused on what he cares about most, and that was him. This year he says he’s gonna focus on what you care about, which is global warming. (laughing) No. He says he’s gonna focus on jobs. Do you want proof, ladies and gentlemen, the government cannot jump-start the economy? I mean, it’s all in front of you. It’s out there, 12 months of it to see. How many stimuli did we do last year and the year before? We did a bunch. They haven’t done a thing. The whole concept of ‘saved jobs’ is BS. What have they done? Nothing. Aside from the Economics 101 of it and the math of it…

I mean you cannot take $50 trillion or $50 billion, any amount of money out of the private sector then put it back in and say you’re stimulating something. You’d have to infuse money that’s not already there. And there’s no money to do that. You have to print it, you have to borrow it, or you have to tax it and then put it back. This is an old shell game; it’s an old trick. It’s designed to enhance the growth of government. But the proof is right there in the latest unemployment numbers — and I don’t mean the 10% unemployment, which is an obvious disaster, and I don’t mean the 17% real unemployment. That’s an obvious disaster. But here are two numbers from last Friday’s jobless numbers: Construction unemployment is 22.7%. It’s 22.7%! Now, remember, the stimulus was for ‘shovel-ready jobs;’ Roads, bridges, schools, all this infrastructure stuff. Construction unemployment is almost 23%. Government worker unemployment is at 3%, 3.6, less than 4%.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The AP is admitting here it didn’t work but then, hey, they say let’s try it again. They outline in this piece that the stimulus money that’s been spent so far has had no effect on jobs, none. Not anywhere. The veil is off. They’re no longer pretending that there are jobs created or saved. Now, here is how the story starts: ‘Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in –‘ and it’s not Bush’s. It’s Obama’s. ‘– spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an AP analysis has found. Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an ‘urgent need to accelerate job growth.”

All they can talk about from the stimulus that’s been beneficial is the extension of unemployment compensation benefits. So, you know, the real question there, folks, is how come despite the vast amount of history that’s available to all of us, all of the smart, so-called smart educated business and economic people, hard evidence, examples of failure and successes, charts and graphs, data out the wazoo, we still seem to be confounded by the elementary process of creating and keeping jobs. Why is this? Why is the blueprint for coming out of the circumstance we’re in, the 1980s, JFK in the 1960s, why is it ignored? And why is this, government spending, constantly looked at as a panacea when it isn’t? And the answer is it’s not looked at as a panacea. The people in charge of doing this know exactly what they’re doing. They’re weakening the private sector for a host of reasons that we’ve mentioned. I’m going to get blue in the face here, repetitive. Just don’t doubt me. It’s being done on purpose and the reasons are all recounted in various multiple monologues at my website, RushLimbaugh.com.