RYAN: “Look at just the $90 billion in stimulus the vice president was in charge of overseeing — this $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups.”
THE FACTS: Dismissing an entire package of energy stimulus grants and loans as “green pork” ignores the help that was given to people to make their homes more energy efficient, grants to public entities constructing high speed rail lines and tax credits to manufacturers to install equipment fostering cleaner energy.
To be sure, there were notable failed investments, such as $528 million to the politically connected and now-bankrupt solar power company Solyndra. But Ryan’s claim made it sound like every penny went down the drain.
More broadly, economists are nearly universal in saying Obama’s $800 billion-plus stimulus passed in early 2009 helped create both public-sector and private-sector jobs, even if they fell short of what sponsors had hoped. Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimated the stimulus saved or created more than 3 million jobs.
Put aside for one moment the annoyance one experiences in watching Big Media repeatedly use the phrase “saved or created.” What really bothers me is the omission of critical context from the above passage. I have helpfully hinted at that context by bolding certain parts of the passage. I’ll wait here until you have figured it out.
See the problem? If you divide 800 billion by 3 million, you get the number 266,666. So if we spent $800 billion to get 3 million jobs, that means taxpayers spent $266,666 per job.
That anyone could ever possibly tout this as a success of any kind boggles the mind.
The piece does catch how Biden lied on certain topics, though, such as his claim that only people making a million dollars or more would see a tax increase. How many times has Obama said he wants to raise taxes on households making over $250,000? (A figure slightly less than the $266,666 the administration spent on each job “created or saved,” I might add.) I would wager those of you in households making between $250,000 and $1 million noticed this prevarication.
Let’s see if that not-so-little lie gets spread beyond that one piece. It’s a pretty damned significant lie.
We need to remember: fact check the fact checkers. By assuming the title of “fact checker” they don a mantle of objectivity that they haven’t earned. We need to strip off their disguise and reveal them for the partisan hacks they really are.