Obama Administration Holding on to Hope

Well, the stimulus package that the Obama Administration put together may not be doing what it was intended to do. As a matter of fact, it seems the only people that are pleased with it are Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama. When the package was released, they did not think that the national unemployment rate would rise above 8 percent, but it is currently sitting at 9.5 percent. So does this mean that the $787 billion dollar stimulus package is a big waste? As of right now, it may be too early to tell, but there are many Republicans and Democrats that are not pleased with what the stimulus spending plan has accomplished. There are many Republicans that believe that it was just one big 'pork' bill. They believe that the economy will start to recover on its own even before the heart of the stimulus package gets out there. Biden can be quoted as saying "we misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package." Unemployment has yet to decrease in most areas of the country. There are currently 13 states that have unemployment rates at 10% or higher. The state with the highest unemployment rate as of May 2009 is Michigan at 14.1%. The states with the lowest unemployment are Nebraska and North Dakota at 4.4%.

It appears that states and cities with an economy heavily based on tourism are suffering the most. For example, Las Vegas Nevada has an unemployment rate at over 11%. Casino Revenue has taken a hard hit with declines for the last fifteen months in a row. Construction in the Las Vegas area has also suffered. Many states across the nation have passed budgets which contained cuts to a number of local and state services such as education. Stimulus money will be delivering billions of dollars to states to help fund local and state services.

According to Vice President Biden, the stimulus money is being spent over an 18 month period and he still believes that we will see more improvement as more money goes into the economy over the next several months. While there hasn't been much talk about a second stimulus package, another one may come along in the future if there is no definable improvements. As of right now, we are not seeing the job growth that has been promised and hopefully that'll change as time goes on. Republicans believe that the bill was just about spending, spending, and more spending. Many people in the GOP believe that it did not focus enough on small businesses and helping people keep most of what they earned. Only time will tell if the stimulus package gets the U.S. out of this recession.

Sources:

FOXNews.com, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/05/biden-misread-bad-economy/

Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm