The buzz this week has been about the failings of our gigundus stimulus package. By now new jobs were supposed to be plopping onto our laps like ripe fruit.
Yes, our President promised “a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America.” Yes, our Vice-President assured us the package would “drop-kick” our economy out of recession. Unemployment was supposed to peak at 8 percent.
Well, the fruit ain’t ploppin’. The economic football ain’t flyin’ toward the goal posts. And unemployment is at 9.5 percent and climbing.
First, let us dismiss the fantasies of our top guys. Nobody can predict this stuff accurately. Yet we demand they do. We want numbers and dates from them. Backed into a corner, they will say anything to quiet the mob. You would do the same.
Next, let us dismiss the silly messages they have trotted out from the Excuse Locker. Joe Biden said on tv that “we and everyone else misread the economy.” And that the economy he and his boss inherited was weaker than they had been led to believe. This is worse than Johnny’s the-dog-ate-it excuse for not producing his homework.
Our economy is more stethoscoped than a buxon hypocondriac’s chest, more probed than a Spitzer hooker. Rip Van Biden, if you were misled about the economy you must have slept through half of last year.
There are a few small reasons why the stimulus package has not yet worked like Miracle-Gro on the economy. One is that only a few billion of the hundreds of billions of so-called stimulus dollars have reached the economy. Most of the dollars are not scheduled to arrive for many months and years. The fertilizer is still in the pickup truck and not on the garden. That is why the tomato plants have not perked up, maw.
Another subtle reason why the stimulus package has yet to deliver stimulus: It ain’t a stimulus package. Psssst, it is a package of pork sausage.
The President did not fashion this package. He passed the job on to Nancy and her crew in the House. In turn, they did not fashion a stimulus package either. (They did not even read what they had created before they voted on it.)
