3 ms·
Actually he never actually DOES from what I can tell. He dances around the issue and makes general claims but never actually says "X% went here. Y% went here".
by lusis 16y ago
Actually he never actually DOES from what I can tell. He dances around the issue and makes general claims but never actually says "X% went here. Y% went here". He says things like "spending on safety-net programs, mainly unemployment insurance and Medicaid, has risen" which means squat. Is he implying that the administration misused stimulus funds to instead fund saftey-net programs?
The fact of the matter is that the stimulus money went exactly where it was intended. Government works programs and questionable "initiatives" (Unless those signs I see every 10 miles are made up).
It just didn't work so the new tactic is to claim "It wasn't enough" or "It wasn't actually spent".
- mquander 16y agoI don't think it's fair to characterize that as the "new tactic." Liberals were complaining that it wasn't enough while and ever since the Recovery Act was passed. Krugman himself was yelling pretty loudly about it, cite: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithme... At the time, liberals were advocating a $1-2 trillion stimulus made up primarily of government spending, which is obviously not remotely what we got. Funding safety net programs is not really a "misuse of funds;" it was built into the legislation. (Maybe it's a poor use of funds, but that's Congress's fault more than the White House's.) If you want specifics on how money was distributed, just go to the source: http://www.recovery.gov/ http://www.recovery.gov/ It looks like a bit more than a third of the money allocated actually went toward "contracts, grants, and loans," which is the category that one would expect to be creating jobs.