White House - 2 million jobs saved or created from Stimulus

[BirminghamExaminer]

Excerpt:



It is unfortunate for the Obama administration that they haven't delivered the message that the ARRA or stimulus program has saved and created jobs. In a New York Times/CBS News poll, only 6% of Americans polled believe that the stimulus has already created jobs. 41% believe the stimulus act will create jobs.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus program has helped many states and local governments and has created millions of jobs. President Obama has stated that the stimulus program staved off a 1929 style depression. But the message hasn't gotten to the people as the NY Times/CBS poll shows. In fact, many people appear to confuse TARP with ARRA. TARP was the bill that was passed by President Bush at the end of his administration to stave off the 'collapse' of the banks that were too big to fail (saving Wall Street). The ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) was passed by President Obama one year ago today and has fed billions of dollars into creating jobs, updating infrastructure and helping local governments, along with cutting taxes.

[Don Caballero]

1. This is great news and very promising.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Believability Issue

Obama also says things like "I never campaigned on the public option", so credibility is nil.

People see that jobs keep disappearing, and they keep hearing the WH trumpeting the improving economy and... here we are.

[BirminghamExaminer]

3. We are still losing jobs but at a much slower rate than before

so there is some optimism about the economy. What Bush left us with is not going to end overnight.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. I Agree. You Can't Spend That Money Without Creating Jobs.

Unless it's all simply grabbed by bankers and so forth, but I don't think it was.

I'm just pointing out why people don't believe the White House.

[Crabitha]

5. By your logic, no politician has any credibility.

Like you I'm disappointed in things that haven't happened under Obamas White House but unlike you, I am not going to judge his credibility after one year in office especially considering he came into the White House on the heels of the biggest freaking crisis this country has been in in my lifetime.

I'm angry that DADT hasn't been repealed. I'm angry about Gitmo. I think adding people to AFghanistan is a mistake but you know what? I still think our president has done a pretty freaking marvelous job considering what he has had to work with.

It's a shame that people had such unrealistic hopes for the new president. What did you expect? Which president have you studied who was able to keep every promise they made during their campaign? Which president have you studied who has walked on water that has made you dismiss our president because he hasn't been able to meet all of the things he talked about during his campaign in his first year in office? Were you expecting a god?

I'm sick of people like you pretending to support the Democratic party and the president while ignoring reality. Would you rather have Bush back? What is it you want exactly?

Clinton was one of my favorite presidents but there were policies he supported that I hated. That didn't make me say he had no credibility.

I believe that people like you have been very successfully manipulated by the right wing media. It's pathetic. You think Rush Limbaugh and Faux news hasn't had an effect on how you view the president? Think again. Yippee, you win. The president said something during the campaign that didn't come true so he has no credibility whatsoever. Well when the next messiah comes along who makes your every dream come true, let all the rest of us know who she is.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Has Alan Grayson Lied? Al Franken? Bernie Sanders?

There are a lot of good politicians who don't lie.

And Obama's lies have have been of enormous magnitude - he's essentially lied about being a Democrat, Since taking office, he's acted as a Republican. He's not been George Bush, but he's basically Ronald Reagan.

Claiming that he never ran on the public option is astonishing, given the hours of clips on YouTube showing candidate Obama doing exactly that. It's a bald-faced lie.

In any case, when a person is a known liar, they don't have credibility. It's a simple fact. You may happen to feel that lying is OK, but most people don't believe a person after being lied to on several occasions.

[JTFrog]

7. Count yourself amongst the unbelievable.

Unless you're gonna claim you've never lied.

:shrug:

[Crabitha]

8. I didn't see the others' campaigns run ..every word in every speech

All I'm saying is that I've yet to see a president fulfill every single promise he has made once elected.

And like the Democrats in Congress here we are arguing amongst ourselves.

Obama asked the Congress to come up with a health care bill which may have been a mistake but I think he was trying to avoid the Clinton mistake. I don't think he spent enough time trying to herd the cats. I think he's made plenty of mistakes but he has also done some good things. I am not going to dismiss him completely because of a campaign statement he made and failed to fulfill.

I'm irritated that he hasn't done something about DADT. I am the mother of a gay adult male. But my son isn't in the military and never will be unless there is a draft. The point is that I have strong feelings about GBLT issues and I STILL think Obama was the best choice for president and I'm not turning my back on him over campaign promises unfulfilled after one year.

I listened to his speeches, I downloaded his speeches via ipod since 2004 and listened to him. I never once thought he was a liberal. How anybody listening to his speeches could have thought so is beyond my comprehension. But I also never once thought a liberal could get elected in this conservative cultural climate. I've always thought him a moderate. And that is what he is.

I was willing to vote for a moderate over a Bush clone and will do so again. Since I was a girl, the world has become much more conservative and I am battling that bigger picture of a large majority of religious conservatives while you are dishing out minutia as if it changes the big things when it doesn't. We live in a world where many more people listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Faux news than read newspapers or get enough education to even understand that there are three branches of government and how they work. So I'm not going to pick through the minutia looking for what candidate Obama said compared to what President Obama said. Instead I'm trying to look at the big picture, find the closest path to the left that is realistic and go for it. I'm not an ideologue anymore. I can't afford it. We as a nation can't afford it unless we want Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney or even Mike Huckabee for president in the next few decades.

You compared three liberal Senators or congressmen to the President. As I said before, Obama is not a liberal and never pretended to be one. I love Grayson but do you think he could be elected president in a cultural climate where there are people who think Sarah Palin is presidential material? Where James Dobson runs roughshod over the religious right and at least half of the Republicans in office?

How you can compare President Obama to Bush is understandable. It's what all the freepers like to say and apparently it's working well. Obama ended torture policies and has been attacked non-stop by the Cheneys for it. Obama has restored our standing in the rest of the world which is incredibly important if we want cooperation with other nations. He's only been in office for one year. Give him a chance. The health care debate isn't over yet.

What Obama ran on was hope; health care for all, an end to the war in Iraq, the closing of Gitmo, an end to DADT and a build up of troops in Afghanistan (putting our military where it should have been all along instead of in Iraq).

I would have preferred that he run on national health care, medicare for everyone. The Lieberman proposal for Medicare for people 50 and up would have been a great start but of course Lieberman is a big fat Republican suckup so of course he changed his mind when he realized some of his colleagues liked his idea.

If a majority of Democrats in Congress can't get health care passed, or anything else at this point, don't blame it on Obama. Blame it on the Democratics in Congress. The President can't do everything himself. So he made one statement that you have seen on a youtube video that he later says he didn't "run on" and you've decided to dismiss him completely and irrevocably. That's fine, that's your business. But I want this country to improve. I refuse to say the president has no credibility because you think that he "ran" on a pubic option.

I covered Obama from 1994 and while he has said that he is in favor of a public option in health care (whatever a public option means exactly), he never "RAN" on it.

[Daveparts still]

11. Obama on Single Payer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

[JohnWxy]

9. your statement that he campaigned on the "public option" interested me as I wasn't sure that he

talked about a "public option" in the campaign. He certainly talked about reforming our health care system but I wasn't sure he talked about a 'public option' specifically. so I looked around with Google's help of course and these MSNBC reporters say he never said anything about the "public option" in the campaign:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/12/23/2159620.aspx


As we've written before, the words "public option" didn't appear in any Obama campaign speech we can remember; they didn't come up during the debates; and they didn't surface in TV ads. Remember when Obama and Hillary Clinton dominated the MSNBC debate with Brian Williams and Tim Russert with 16 minutes of health-care discussion, the words "public option" were never uttered.

It is true that a public plan was part of Obama's health-care plan, and it's also true that the public option was an idea being debated in policy-wonk circles during the campaign.

But, from our vantage point as reporters who covered the presidential campaign, Obama's quote to the Washington Post appears to be correct.

And here's Huffington Post's Sam Stein's take: "An examination of approximately 200 newspaper articles from the campaign, as well as debate transcripts and public speeches shows that Obama spoke remarkably infrequently about creating a government-run insurance program. Indeed, when he initially outlined his health care proposals during a speech before the University of Iowa on March 29, 2007, he described setting up a system that resembles the current Senate compromise - in which private insurers would operate in a non-profit entity that was regulated heavily by a government entity."

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I think it's possible that a lot of people believe like you that he actually did talk about a public option during the campaign.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Behold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cET2OSbtj0g

[Daveparts still]

10. It all depends

It all depends on what your definition of is, is. The stimulus act was supposed to stimulate new jobs through highway construction. The bottom fell out of state and federal hwy tax coffers so the stimulus was redirected towards perserving jobs. That’s a good thing and in no ways bad but that’s not what the stimulus was ever intended for.

Now the same states face the same revenue problems and have spent their stimulus funds. California has a 40% drop in revenue. It’s good that the stimulus saved those jobs but what about this year?

35% of the money was in tax cuts to create jobs and if employers don’t hire because the economy is bad the money will never be spent because it’s not really there, it’s a tax cut. A discount on a tax bill.