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Obama's Misleading 3 Million Jobs Created Claim

By Bill Wilson

In the State of the Union Address, Barack Obama attempted to convince the American people that the economy has turned the corner, things are getting better, and “we’ve come too far to turn back now.”

Reading Obama’s speech carefully, he noted the 8 million jobs that have overall been lost in the recession.

Then, he painted a rosy portrait by saying, “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs.” But he’s comparing apples and oranges.

There is a distinction between the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) measurement of private sector jobs in the establishment survey and the overall jobs picture in the household survey. For obvious reasons, the narrower establishment survey does not catch everything. But most Americans who heard the speech probably thought Obama was saying the economy had created 3 million jobs overall since Feb. 2010.

It was a distinction Obama again failed to make on Jan. 25, a day later, on the campaign trail in Iowa. Then, he said, “We have created 3 million jobs over the last 22 months.” Again, implying the economy has created more jobs than it actually has. However?

According to BLS, since Feb. 2010, when Obama starts measuring his claim that 3 million jobs were created, the amount of people employed has only increased from 138.66 million to 140.79 million, a net increase of only 2.13 million. While that sounds nice, that is a pace of just 96,000 a month, which does not even keep up with the growth of the population — which grew at a pace of 163,000 a month — let alone replace the 8 million jobs that were lost in the recession.

That means, when population growth and the loss of 4 million working age adults from the labor force who have simply stopped looking for work are fully taken into account, the unemployment situation has not improved at all.

We have an effective unemployment rate of 11 percent, and an underemployed rate of 17 percent. There are over 27 million working age adults who still cannot find full-time work, no thanks to Obama’s “stimulus” policies. To lie about the horrific state of our economy and the plight of 27 million Americans who cannot find work is a crime against humanity.

The Obama Administration is entitled to its own opinion, but not its own facts. Technically, if one looks singularly at BLS’ establishment survey of the private sector, 3.1 million jobs were created by businesses in the past 22 months.

But that does not reveal the whole story.

Obama is creating the false impression that the unemployment situation is improving when as noted above we’re stuck in the water.

The irony is that even if the overall economy had really created more than 3 million jobs in the past 22 months, we would still only be creating 140,000 jobs a month, still not faster than the growth of the population.

Obama is out of his league. It is time for new leadership who will honestly evaluate the situation, and prescribe the pro-growth policies to turn the Ship of State around from sinking into the Abyss.

Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Comedian-in-Chief

 

Waiting for an Anti-Newt

By David Bozeman

As a political junkie, my biggest wish was always for someone to put elite-media commentators and debate moderators in their place. Now that Juan Williams and John King have both been savaged by the agile tongue of the great anti-Romney, I solemnly ask — is it too late to take that wish back?

A bold, even audacious conservative statesman is certainly long overdue. Speaker Newt Gingrich's outbursts, refreshing at first, now bear the mark of grandstanding, not unlike the proverbial snake oil salesman who has perfected his pitch and finally captured the crowd (and their pocketbooks). Discourse that was meant to be Reagan-esque now sounds calculated and predictable.

As long as Romney held front-runner status, he constantly wrestled with such charges as “conservative-lite” and, most notably, “flip-flopper.” Now that the momentum has shifted back to Newt, he should have to, and just as often, defend his tenure at Freddie Mac, his support of President Bush's prescription drug bill, his own calls for individual health insurance mandates, his frequent claims of man-made global warming and his support of the ultra-liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava in a New York US congressional race over Tea Party favorite Douglas Hoffman. As a loyal debate viewer, watching Mitt flounder on stage, defending Romney-care, has grown tedious. We know the deal by now. It's your turn in the hot seat, Newt.

Sometime in the late 1990’s, I bought the Speaker's To Renew America from a local bookstore's discount bin. Published in 1995, just after he assumed the House speakership in a Republican landslide, Renew is a good, though generic, conservative blueprint for America in the 20th Century. It was recently headed for my local charity store for a donation when I decided a quick perusal might be in order, given that Newt may be the only man standing between Obama and a second term. On Page 36, discussing American military resolve, Gingrich refers to FDR as "probably the greatest president of the 20th Century."

You read that correctly. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is big. This is not some difference in taste or temperament, this is about worldview and a philosophy of leadership and the role of government. Wouldn't most conservatives have given Reagan that honor? Heck, why not Eisenhower? But FDR, one of the leading architects of statism, whose very policies and stranglehold on America's political psyche Reagan fought much of his life to undo?

FDR? And then there's Newt's notorious affection for another Roosevelt, one of the progressive movement's leading luminaries, Teddy.

An explanation of his preferences would be far more illuminating than another full-frontal attack on Bain Capital. Every Republican assumes the Reagan legacy when necessary, but the Gipper proved that leadership entails focus, consistency and a steady hand. If the former Speaker can wage a general election campaign as successfully as he has recently debated, then the conservative movement may well have found its new statesman.

But now is the time to choose between deed and rhetoric that, though rousing, amounts to little more than the calculated ire of Washington's most prevalent beast, the walking ego.

David Bozeman, former Libertarian Party Chairman, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

U.S. Republicans Gearing Up To Stop Funding IMF Bailout Of Euro Zone

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured story from the Wall Street Journal, House Republicans want to pull $100 billion of funding from the International Monetary Fund that is being used to bail out Europe, and Americans for Limited Government is still awaiting a response to its Freedom of Information Act Request to find out where the funds are going:

By Ian Talley

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Republicans are gearing up their political machinery to prevent a U.S. rescue of the euro zone as the International Monetary Fund is pushing to bulk up its resource base to more than $1 trillion.

Senior House GOP lawmakers Wednesday pressed the administration to assure Congress it isn't planning to contribute any taxpayer money to bail out ailing European economies. Many of the same lawmakers are backing legislation to pull back a $100 billion emergency loan by the U.S. the IMF in 2009 currently being used to finance bailout programs.

It is unlikely the lawmakers will be able to rescind the 2009 loan. But there is a strong chance they can block Treasury's plan to use the money to deliver on its promise to double the fund's normal resource base. Republicans could also prevent the administration from contributing to the IMF's new money push…

Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government, said his group has filed an appeal for a Freedom of Information Act request for more information on the use of U.S. money for euro-zone financing.

Wilson said the appeal was necessary because Treasury hadn't yet fully responded to the request.

"We'd like to know if there was a discussion for it to be used in Spain or Italy," Wilson said. "There's no way they're going to be able to produce enough money to be able to bailout some of these countries, and by extending these loans, in effect, you are putting the U.S. taxpayers on the hook for that country's sovereign debt."

Get the full story here from the Wall Street Journal.

The Politics of Waivers

By John Vinci

Once again the Obama Administration is issuing waivers from its controversial Obamacare law in order to make it more politically palatable. With high Catholic populations in key swing states, the Obama Administration announced last Friday that it will give 1-year waivers to Catholic and other religious organizations conscientiously opposed to a new regulation that requires employers to offer free contraceptives to their employees — including controversial abortifacient contraceptives.

Half of the 12 states identified by a recent USA TODAY/Gallop poll to be swing states have Catholic populations of 20 percent or more. Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all have Catholic populations that hover around 30 percent. And Ohio and Florida, both must-win swing states, also have significant Catholic populations.

While churches are already exempted, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refused to expand the exemption for other religious organizations. For most of these other religious organizations, the one-year waivers delay the implementation of the contraceptive regulation until after the November elections.

By refusing to broaden the exemption to all religious organizations and not just churches the Obama Administration has moved so far left to curry favor with its left-wing base, that even the Washington Post has condemned them for it.

The Obama Administration believes that the one-year waivers, “strike the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

But those whom the Obama Administration is pressuring disagree. “It’s as if they said ‘We’ll give you a year to figure out how to violate your conscience,’” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has said it will take the Obama Administration to court. Colorado Christian University and Belmont Abbey College, are both represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, already have cases pending against this regulation.

The Administration’s announcement comes two weeks after it released details on another type of Obamacare waiver — the annual limit waiver. HHS issued details of the hundreds of waivers and waiver renewals it has issued since Sept. 2010. Without these waivers many workers would have lost their health coverage due to Obamacare mandates.

Originally, the annual limit waivers were to be renewed annually. But last June, perhaps also to avoid controversy in an election year, the Department of Human Services announced that it would not accept applications for waivers past Sept. 22, 2011. Those that successfully applied by the deadline were issued a waiver that extends until January 1, 2014 instead of the one-year waivers that were previously issued.

The Daily Caller reported that, of those waivers issued since June 17, 2011, the ones issued to Unions impacted 543,812 union workers while waivers issued to private employer plans affected 69,813 employees.

The same unions who lobbied for Obamacare are now getting waivers from its effects.
We do not criticize the effects of Obamacare waivers — which are to give Americans a reprieve from the tyrannical power of Obamacare. (We would hope future administrations would give even more waivers should Obamacare not be repealed.)

But we condemn the Obamacare system — a system that requires waivers of its powers over the U.S. health system in order to be politically palatable — all the while reserving the right to use the full breadth of those powers in the future.

John Vinci is a staff attorney with Americans for Limited Government and is the editor in chief for the www.obamacarewatcher.org website.

The Fall Of The Soviet Union May Seem A Little Familiar To You

Video by Frank McCaffrey

Obama's unfair tax plan

By Rick Manning

Tax fairness is the campaign theme for the State of the Union political theater, yet what is being proposed doesn’t seem very fair.

According to the Census Bureau, 48.6 percent of all Americans live in a household that receives some sort of taxpayer assistance, and USA Today reports that only 54 percent of the people who file tax returns end up paying any taxes at all.

It seems to me that those of us who don’t receive government handouts, and are foolish enough to pay income tax, have been handed a pretty raw deal.

Those of us who pay taxes get to work our butts off, take risks, create jobs for others, make sacrifices that take us away from our families and spend 50, 60, 70 or even 100 hours some weeks trying to make our living.

Yet the president thinks it is unfair that he can’t spend even more of our money to create even more government beneficiaries.

Of course, there are those who invest in companies and provide the capital to spur job creation. Surely the president can appreciate how difficult it is to pick winners and losers in the private sector given his administration’s dismal record in the world of venture socialism.

After giving billions of taxpayer dollars to bankrupt losers like Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, SpectraWatt and Eastern Energy, President Obama must realize why the returns on risk capital are taxed at a lower rate than regular income.

If he doesn’t understand this, perhaps it is because he became a millionaire after he became an elected official and never had to actually risk his own money on someone else’s dream.

Perhaps if he had, he would understand that raising taxes on capital investment in the name of fairness is both a job killer and horrifically bad for the middle-class worker who depends upon this investment for his or her job.

But in a world where you believe that government is the source of all wealth, it is not surprising that this president would attack private investment while defending his own failed public investment record.

In the alternative universe that is ObamaWorld, successful private investing is the ultimate sin and must be taxed at a higher rate even if it drives investment overseas and ultimately hurts American workers.

After all, it is about giving everyone a “fair chance” by redistributing wealth from those who earn it to those who have the political power to take it.

Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is the communications director of Americans for Limited Government.

Treasury transparency on IMF bailouts of Europe lacking

By Robert Romano

House Republican Conference Vice Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Americans for Limited Government (ALG) president Bill Wilson joined together today in expressing deep concerns about the failure of President Barack Obama's Treasury Department to comply with even minimal transparency standards in their dealings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Rep. McMorris Rodgers, the sponsor of legislation rescinding a $100 billion credit line that Congress, asserts, "It is simply unacceptable for the Treasury Department to continue to ignore legitimate inquiries about the U.S. participation in the European Union financial crisis. The Secretary's failure to meet the bare minimum standards of transparency makes it all the more urgent that Congress rescind the $100 billion line of credit which the Secretary oversees."

Wilson, whose group on Jan. 12 filed an administrative appeal to the Treasury Department due to their failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on the same subject, agrees stating, "It is simply outrageous that the Obama Administration is trying to hide information from the American people about a $100 billion liability that this President supported and signed into law."

On Nov. 22, the Treasury Department had requested an extra ten days to process the ALG request in a timely fashion, which should have been received on Jan. 5.

“These delays are simply inexcusable when billions of U.S. taxpayer money is already being put at risk,” Wilson said.

In addition to the $100 billion credit line, the U.S. also currently provides the IMF with a $64 billion quota that can be lent. So far, at least $27.68 billion of U.S. funds has been given to foreign governments with a promise of repayment, including $22 billion from the quota, according to the IMF.

The additional $100 billion dramatically expands the IMF's ability to tap the U.S. taxpayer to bail out nations like Greece and the banks that enabled them to continue their out of control spending policies that have led them to financial ruin.

"Based on publicly available information, we know the U.S. is already bailing out Europe. The question is to what extent, which a proper response to our FOIA request by Treasury would reveal," Wilson explained.

The credit line which has already been tapped for $7.2 billion according to the IMF thus far allows the international organization to draw more than $100 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars without any additional authorization from Congress. The McMorris Rodgers legislation would eliminate the liability.

"If President Obama feels that the U.S. taxpayer should bail out the failed socialist states of Europe, then he needs to come to Congress and request the funds," McMorris Rodgers added.

Wilson concluded, "Any member of Congress who fails to put this legislation on President Obama's desk is choosing to use taxpayer money to bail out Europe and the banks that lent these out of control governments the money to continue their spending binge. No one will be able to hide from this fact, and the public is going to be outraged."

The McMorris Rodgers bill currently has 90 co-sponsors and is pending in the House Financial Services Committee.

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.

1000 Days of Dysfunction

By Howard Rich

When U.S. President Barack Obama strides into the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives this week to deliver his fourth State of the Union address, it will mark exactly 1,000 days since the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate has passed a budget.

The last time the Senate passed a budget was April 29, 2009 – three months after Obama was sworn into office. Since then the federal government has spent $9.4 trillion – including $4.1 trillion in money it didn’t have (and thus had to borrow from future generations of taxpayers). As a result the U.S. debt has soared from $11.1 to $15.2 trillion over the past 1,000 days – and is projected to climb to $16.4 trillion by the end of 2012.

Does this sound like responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources to you?

In fairness to the dysfunctional Senate there is plenty of budgetary blame to go around, though. In 2010, for example, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass a budget for the first time in 36 years – neglecting to perform what their own Majority Leader once referred to as “the most basic function of governing.”

Why didn’t the House pass a spending plan that year? The same reason the Senate refuses to do so today – sheer spinelessness.

“No one wants to spell out what they would do given that the choices are humongous deficits or tough policy choices, all in an incredibly tense election year,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said two years ago. “The budget never really had a chance.”

Another reason? In 2010 House leaders were too busy concocting procedural loopholes to force Obamacare down our throats, creating yet another costly long-term obligation at a time when taxpayers can’t afford to pay for government’s existing entitlement behemoths. And while Republicans in Congress unanimously opposed Obamacare – it’s worth noting that many of the GOP’s loudest critics previously supported President George W. Bush’s ill-conceived prescription drug benefit, part of a dramatic ramp-up in federal spending that took place under the guise of “compassionate conservatism.”

And while the Republican-controlled U.S. House did pass a budget in 2011, its leaders in both chambers have been far too eager to accommodate Democrats in reaching short-term spending “compromises.”

Regardless of which chamber or party is responsible for the dysfunction, though, failing to pass an annual appropriations bill is inexcusable fiscal policy.

When government is funded in monthly or bi-monthly fits and starts (called “continuing resolutions”) the very worst in Washington spending habits are perpetuated. Meanwhile desperately-needed spending reforms are ignored. The result is a budgetary climate in which short-term deals aimed at averting immediate political consequences take precedence over a long-overdue reprioritization of core government functions.

Failing to pass an annual budget puts politicians’ desire to approve high-time spending on steroids – causing them to “kick the can down the road” even faster than usual, resulting in bad decisions, bigger deficits and more debt.

Six years ago, then-U.S. Senator Obama had some harsh words for Republicans on this very subject.

“America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership,” Obama correctly observed at the time.
Sadly, both our debt and Washington’s “failure of leadership” have assumed truly frightening dimensions under his watch – with disastrous consequences for our nation.

Despite the unprecedented barrage of new government spending over the last 1,000 days, a record 146.4 million Americans are now classified as poor or low income – including 13 million Americans who are currently unemployed. A record 46 million Americans are on food stamps, and 22 percent of our nation’s children are living in poverty.

Against such a backdrop, it is Washington’s responsibility to acknowledge the failure of its current approach to budgeting and embark on a path that reverses our current course and puts the private sector in charge of promoting prosperity. Maintaining the status quo in Washington with respect to the budget will not only add explosive power to a ticking fiscal time bomb, it will perpetuate the descent of our nation into third world status.

The author is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.

Rep. Lamborn Reacts To Obama's State of the Union

Video by Frank McCaffrey
 
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