Monday, October 4, 2010

Ron Johnson Defies facts of Stimulus, relies on “belief.”



Keep in mind the one fact that keeps coming up: The size of the deficit is mostly due to lost tax revenue. Ron Johnson would have slashed revenues even more with irresponsible tax cuts and no government intervention. Assuming Johnson would have done nothing to save Wall Street…what the hell are voters thinking? The simple facts lay bare the truth:

jsonline: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus boosted the Gross Domestic Product by between 1.7% and 4.5%; lowered the jobless rate between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points; increased the number of full-time equivalent jobs by 2 million to 4.8 million, compared with what would have happened otherwise; and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.

White House report said the stimulus was on track to produce the promised 3.5 million jobs … about two-thirds of the money had been spent via tax cuts or government spending.

Comparing reality to rhetoric:
Feingold said, "It has definitely been successful in helping prevent a Great Depression. Had we followed Mr. Johnson's advice, we may very well have gone into a Depression."
That follows the CBO and White House reports. But throught the Johnson looking glass:
Johnson said, "I don't believe government is the solution. I want to move in the direction of limited government. I don't want to start throwing $1 trillion at the problem.” If the government had instead cut taxes, and controlled spending, "the economy would have taken off. If I could wave a magic wand, I would take the entire Obama agenda and reverse it. The stimulus did not work."
Who’s right?
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison economists said that, in general … most economists believe the stimulus was a good decision. Menzie Chinn, UW economist, points out that, "The big chunk of the deficit is because our tax revenues collapsed."

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