$646,214 PER GOVERNMENT JOB

Most of the spending in the House 825B$ 'stimulus bill' is unlikely to be timely or temporary. Strangely, most of it is targeted toward sectors of the economy where unemployment is the lowest. Consider:

• The December unemployment rate was only 2.3 percent for government workers [unionized] and 3.8 percent in education [unionized] and health [unionized].
• Unemployment rates in manufacturing and construction, by contrast, were 8.3 percent and 15.2 percent respectively.
• Yet 39 percent of the $550 billion in the bill would go to state and local governments.
• Another 17.3 percent would go to health and education -- sectors where relatively secure government jobs are also prevalent.

If the intent of the plan is to alleviate unemployment, why spend over half of the money on sectors where unemployment is lowest? [they're unionized]

The Obama administration claims the stimulus bill will "create or save three or four million jobs over the next two years . . . with over 90 percent (of those jobs) in the private sector." To prove it, they issued a report from Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Its key estimates, however, were simply lifted from an outdated paper by Mark Zandi of Moody's economy.com :

• Zandi's current estimates have government employment growing by 330,400 over two years as a result of the House bill (compared with 244,000 in Bernstein-Romer paper).
• Yet even that updated figure still amounts to only 8.3 percent of total jobs added, even though state and local governments are to receive 39 percent of the funds.
• Spending $214.5 billion to create or save 330,400 government jobs implies that taxpayers are being asked to spend $646,214 per job.

In short, another $550 billion of deficit spending on top of a deficit already above $1 trillion is likely to prove more dangerous than helpful to an economy already overloaded with risky debt.

[As always, when hard times hit every sector cuts back - except one...]

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