Obama 'stimulus' cash pipeline hooked up to party label, not unemployment figures

Sold as a program to keep the nation's unemployment rate under eight percent (now at 9.7 percent,) the Obama administration's awarding of stimulus funds does not follow unemployment rates or even variations in unemployment rates.

It does, however, follow the party of the congressman who is up for election in November.

Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, analyzing data from Recovery.org, finds Obama's "stimulus" program pours an average of 180 percent more funding into congressional districts held by Democrats than it does into districts held by Republicans.

De Rugy, finding the supposed unemployment funds do not correlate to unemployment figures, writes:

We should expect the government to invest relatively more money in the states that have the highest unemployment rates and less money in the states with lower unemployment rates....

Yet, with a few exceptions, the data show that this is not the case. Many higher-unemployment states are getting far fewer stimulus dollars than lower-unemployment states.

Take Michigan, for instance. Michigan’s 15.2 percent unemployment rate is the highest in the country. So far, it has received $403 per person in stimulus funds. That’s above the average stimulus per person across all states ($326). However, it’s lower than the $409 per person that the state of Vermont, a state with relatively low unemployment (6.8 percent), has received so far. Michigan's per-person take is also much lower than the $707 per person the District of Columbia received. D.C.'s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent.

Now look at the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country: North Dakota. It’s getting $253 per person with a 4.3 percent unemployment rate. Many other states are receiving roughly the same amount of stimulus funds per person despite much higher rates of unemployment.

It's starting to look like Obama's "stimulus" program is nothing more than another plan to purchase a Democrat-controlled Congress using funds borrowed from future taxpayers, much like the bailout of the United Auto Workers, the Cornhusker Kickback of Sen. Ben Nelson and the Louisiana Purchase of Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Rather than provide jobs for Americans who need them, Obama appears to be in the business of buying jobs for Democrat politicians who don't deserve them.



http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com