National Review
2/22/2010
…Schwarzenegger added, “I have been the first . . . of the Republican governors to come out and to support the stimulus money because I say to myself, ‘This is terrific,’ and anyone that says that it hasn’t created a job, they should talk to the 150,000 people that have been getting jobs in California.”
But when the interviewer asked him whether these jobs were created in the private sector, he paused and said something uncertain like “Yes, private and public sector jobs.”
Well, not exactly. Based on the Recovery.gov data, we can see that half of the stimulus money went to the Department of Education (make sure you go to page 10 and stare at those Advance Beauty College Inc. grants).
In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday and made that same point:
I’m sure that if you spend a trillion dollars on government jobs you’ll save some government jobs. . . . The stimulus probably did save state government jobs, and . . . governors . . . appreciate it — the Federal government borrowing money from our grandchildren to send it down to them to make their employment situation with state employees less severe. But . . . if you look at the private sector, where job generation really needs to occur, the stimulus was sold to keep unemployment at 8 percent. It’s now almost 10 percent, and in my state it’s almost 11 percent. It has done little or nothing to stimulate private sector employment.
And he is right…
The entire article is at National Review.
