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By Bradley Blakeman
FOXNews.com
By President Obama's own admission, America -- under
his watch -- faces the worst job losses and recession since the Great
Depression.
One of the first acts the president advanced after becoming
our 44th president was the passage of the more than 1,000 page stimulus bill. A
bill, by the way, that most lawmakers did not read and one that the president
promised would create enough jobs to prevent the national unemployment rate from
rising above 8%.
It is an undisputed fact that our national
unemployment rate continues to hover around 9.5% and many economists argue that
if you take into
account those underemployed, those seasonably employed and those who
have given up looking for a job all together, the actual national unemployment
rate far exceeds 10%.
Let's look at just two facts with regard to
unemployment since Obama took office. The following were compiled from the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics:
*As of 7/20/10 -- 3 million Americans have
lost their jobs.
*As of 7/14/10 -- there are 14 million unemployed men
and women in the United States.
According the U.S.
government's own website Recovery.com, the over $700 billion dollar
stimulus bill created 3 million jobs. That works out to a cost of $168,000 per
job "created."
The propaganda signs we have all seen pop up along the
highways of America touting the stimulus dollars "at work" have cost taxpayers
tens of millions of dollars and created some 17 jobs.
Writing recently
for the New York Post economist Ben Stein uncovered the following with regard to
the stimulus and union paybacks for supporting Obama:
"Almost half of the $820 billion end up in the pockets of Democratic-controlled unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, and federal, state, and municipal employee unions."
By the president's own standard of success, the
"stimulus" was and continues to be a failure.
The answer for the Obama
administration and the Democratically-controlled
Congress to skyrocketing unemployment has NOT been to create jobs, it
has been to pay people to be idle through the payment of unemployment benefits
over long periods of time.
The president and Congressional Democrats did
not seek to lower taxes, create payroll tax "holidays," reduce or eliminate
capital gains taxes, eliminate the death tax or invest in generational capital
improvements that would have created private sector jobs.
Instead they choose to grow government, rewarded
unions and made Americans dependent on government assistance.
Mr.
President, the American people want jobs NOT handouts. They want you and those
like you in Congress to concentrate on job creation not
government dependence. What good is becoming dependent on a
government handout that is far less than what could be realized from a salary
derived from permanent employment?
Republicans believe in the old Chinese
proverb:
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
The Republicans were right to stand on principle in
opposing continued extended unemployment benefits that only results in a deeper
national deficit and does not create one single job.
This latest
multi-billion
dollar unemployment give away that passed in the House and Senate
this week, extends benefits through November and is retroactive to the original
late May cutoff.
Is it coincidence that the Democrat's extension of
unemployment benefits extends through Election Day of 2010? I think not.
Democrats believe in the old Democratic tactic:
Give a man a check, and you are assured his dependence and allegiance for a lifetime.
Democrats can fool some of the people some of the
time but, not enough of the people in time to save them from a rout in the
midterms.
The American people cannot be bought.
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy
assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04. He is currently a professor
of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent
contributor to the Fox
Forum.