It's hard not to feel a little sorry for our pal Debbie; spinning like a top in the face of harsh reality is rough -- and by the looks of things, tiring -- business:
Let's count the ways Debbie Downer misleads and dissembles in this short clip. First, "every economist" worth his salt most certainly does not agree that the $830 Billion "stimulus" bill was a fabulous success. A cursory online search turns up a steady parade of economists from across the political spectrum, as well as independent fact-check entities, who dissent from this "consensus" happy talk. Yet Wasserman-Schultz follows President Obama's lead and continues to promulgate the distortion that only a handful of fiery right-wingers fail to recognize the secret genius and hidden triumphs of the stimulus. Frankly, most voters don't require verdicts from experts to determine the efficacy of Democrats' spendthrift policies. As I wrote last week, the Recovery Act's stats speak for themselves:
This president and his Congressional allies have already shown us what a failed, extravagantly expensive stimulus looks like. They projected a worst-case unemployment rate of eight percent if their "fix" were implemented. They failed. They promised unprecedented transparency and accountability. They failed. They promised that oodles of "shovel-ready projects" would fuel our federally-bankrolled economic comeback. They failed. Look at it this way: Even if one gluttenously consumed Obama's home-cooked jobs figures, the 2009 stimulus was an object lesson in government inefficiency. Again, according to Obama's in-house economists' own trumped up figures, each job allegedly "saved or created" ended up costing taxpayers nearly $300,000.
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Wasserman-Schultz can decry the wrongheadedness of Republicans who think the stimulus didn't work until she's blue in the face. Unfortunately for her, that public opinion ship sailed long ago. Even more astoundingly, DWS characterizes the nation's current economic malaise as an "upswing." The DNC Chairwoman debuted this new wrinkle in her stale argument a mere five days after the markets were jolted by a noxious jobs report (zero net jobs created in August), and amidst a climate of downward employment trends and woeful unemployment projections from the White House itself. Stocks are faltering on new fears of a double-dip recession, consumer confidence has "crumbled" to a low ebb, and the housing market is still a basketcase. The upswingers at the DNC may want to consider retooling their talking points, which are at war with reality.
The president's post-vacation response to this trainwreck is to deliver another speech. He previewed his remarks at a raucous union rally in Detroit over the long weekend. When the assembled workers weren't preoccupied cheering Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.'s calls to "take out" the SOB's in the Tea Party, they were offered a taste of Obama's forthcoming speech, and it sounded...a lot like the speech he's been giving for weeks. Absent a marked departure from the administration's piecemeal, dink-and-dunk, blame-shift approach in Thursday's address, even more Americans will likely conclude that Barack Obama simply isn't up to the task at hand. Hence the Republicans-are-ignorant-theocrats smear mere. It's all they've got.
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