Assessing The Impact Of The Public Sector Union Full Employment Act 0f 2009

Actually, the above title is what the Stimulus should have been named, as that was clearly its purpose. Of the $787 billion funds spent in the Stimulus, only 2.6% of it went to address small businesses. The majority of the rest went to states. The left apparently believed that the private sector would bounce back on its own, and in the meantime, they wanted to keep their power base fully employed and sending dues to the Democrat's cash cow, pulbic sector unions. It was a huge error in judgment that has left us teeting on economic catastrophe. Within eight months, by 1 January, 2010, the private sector had hemmoraged 7.3 million jobs. The public sector, on the other hand, had lost only 100,000 jobs.

Recently, two economists delved deeper into the impact of the Stimulus on states and public sector / private sector employment near 30 months on. Their study, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled," provides in-depth evidence for the same conclusions I pointed to in the paragraph above. It makes for interesting - and damning - reading:

Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.

(H/T Powerline)