Unemployment has risen to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high.
That's much higher than the Obama Administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused to pass his $800 billion stimulus package. The Administration claimed unemployment would rise to 8 percent without a stimulus.
Small businesses are finding it more difficult than ever to borrow badly needed money to meet their payrolls. New financial regulations backed by the Administration are contributing to a terrible credit crunch. Meanwhile, the wealthy Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, perhaps the biggest donor to liberal politicians, received billions of dollars it didn't even need from the taxpayers' $170 billion bailout of AIG.
The Administration claimed that Obama's $800 billion stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose very rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.
Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.
Obama claimed his stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from falling into an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly admitted that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.” The stimulus package subsidized lots of government waste and corruption.
Obama’s welfare-filled stimulus package largely repealed welfare reform. That will result in lower employment and a smaller economy over the long run.
The stimulus package contains racial set-asides and prevailing-wage requirements. The prevailing-wage requirements will cost state taxpayers $17 billion. Racial set-asides are very costly.