Dissecting the Liberal talking Points - Things Would Have Been Much Worse if...

This week, as the debt ceiling battle has heats up, we’ve been taking time to dissect some of the Liberal talking points and explain why they are false. Today we’re going to dive into the frequently used defense of Obama’s Stimulus plans that “Things would’ve been much worse if we hadn’t acted.” It’s easy to say, but impossible to prove, which is likely why Obama and the Democrats like to trumpet it.


The Stimulus failed to do what it was advertised to do: keep unemployment from rising above 8%. Unemployment currently sits at 9.2% two years after the stimulus. It has been as high as 10.2%.  By all measures it failed miserably. Liberals tell us that “things would’ve been worse.” It’s easy to say, but impossible to prove. Historically, such Keynesian economic plans have failed. Many economists believe that if the economy had simply been left alone, the economy would have recovered. Yet we are still mired in a recession that is heading for a double-dip.

The claim that things would’ve been much worse is a cop out. It’s an attempt to claim success from failure. It’s like a football coach who loses the Super Bowl by a field goal saying, “It could’ve been worse. We could’ve lost by three touchdowns! So by that measure, we succeeded by only losing by 3 points.” The truth, however, is that the team lost the Super Bowl. The coach can’t claim victory in that case. Neither can Obama. The stimulus failed. To call it anything but a failure is nothing more than claiming that the end zones were at the 20 yard line so that the team can claim touchdowns were scored each time they were in the Red Zone. However, in the economy, the only measure of victory is turning around an economy.

There is no evidence that the Stimulus did anything to help the economy. It can’t be proven, actually the evidence said it did nothing at best. Yet the Obama administration trumpets it like its fact. The Stimulus failed to do what it claimed it would do. The Stimulus was supposed to prevent unemployment above 8%. Unemployment has spent two years above 8%. That’s a failed program.

Another false measure that the Obama Administration invented to claim victory is “jobs created or saved.” How, precisely, do you quantify a “job saved”? Did the administration poll every American business to see which ones were ready to contract their workforce prior to the stimulus but instead retained those employees? Of course they didn’t. Rather, the Obama administration concocted a number of jobs they expected to be lost, and then considered any jobs before that number as a “job saved.” So if they assessed that we would’ve seen unemployment at say 15% and unemployment only reached 10.2%, you can claim that 4.8% of all jobs in the country were “jobs saved.”

It’s an invented crisis that allows the Obama administration to claim success for something they did not do. It rings reminiscent to me of the movie Canadian Bacon. (If you’ve never seen it, I recommend it.) In it, a fictional American President attempts to invent a nonexistent cold war with Canada to hopefully cause the same kinds of economic booms that the Cold War created through military spending in the private sector. Like the stimulus and the “second great depression” it was a contrived problem which could be “solved” by the government.

The President and his willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media have worked to support this contrivance and lie to the American people. I’ll be some of your jobs were the jobs “saved” as far as the Obama Administration is concerned. I know that my job, which was created along with two others in the fall of 2009, were three of the jobs the Obama administration claims was created by the Stimulus. I can tell you with certainty that’s not what happened. What happened was my company took a risk to create a new department based on an economic opportunity they saw. They didn’t spend stimulus money on it, they spent their own money on it.

That’s the biggest reason the stimulus cannot be considered successful. Other than the bailouts of a few businesses which didn’t deserve to be bailed out, the Stimulus was nothing more than a slush fund for Obama to pay off his Big Union cronies and complete the various bribes to pass Obamacare. As Obama now famously admitted recently, there were no “shovel ready jobs.” The money wasn’t spent on infrastructure, as claimed, because now Obama wants still more money to spend on the same infrastructure.

It’s another lie from the Obama Administration. He’s claiming something that failed succeeded. It’s a move as old as the Liberal Playbook. They tell us how the world will end if we don’t do “X” then, regardless how bad it is after “X” is passed, they tell us how things would have been much, much worse. They are doing it to us right now as it pertains to the Debt Limit increase that is being debated now. They are telling us how badly things will go if we don’t raise the Debt Limit. Should the Republican Party cave, which I sincerely hope they won’t, and things get far worse in the economy as a result of those Liberal policies, I can guarantee you we’ll be told how much worse things would’ve been if we hadn’t acted . You can bank on it.

You can also bank on the fact that, if the GOP doesn’t cave and actually requires real cuts in spending without agreeing to raise taxes on business owners and thus harm the economy, the world won’t end. The United States has reached the Debt Limit before and let it expire without extension and the horrible consequences that Democrats are now predicting didn’t happen then, and they won’t happen this time either. It’s just another false Liberal talking point.