[classicman]

One mans perspective of things from the Seattle area . . .

"We opened the window behind me and threw eight hundred billion dollars out of it."

That was how an aide to a local congressman described to me the economic-stimulus act when it passed in the winter of 2009.

The aide didn't mean it would all be a waste. Or would fail to boost a cratering economy.

He meant that what was unusual about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, other than its staggering cost, was that it was a smorgasbord. A huge experiment in infusing borrowed cash into a gazillion pre-existing channels, from government social programs to grants for road construction to walking-around money in worker paychecks.

It was an emergency. Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott described it as "Congress flying blind."

So here we are a year and a half later. It seems obvious the experiment helped stop a free fall. You can see that in areas where the stimulus has ended. The housing market, for instance, propped up for months by stimulus tax credits, has dropped sharply since that program expired.

But you don't have to be an economist to see that Congress swung and missed on the issue of jobs.

All that spending hasn't gotten many back to work. Take the freshest data for Seattle and King County. In the first three months of 2010, the act is credited with paying for 2,712 jobs here. That's in a county with a labor force of 1.1 million and 90,000 more currently jobless.

A few thousand jobs in three months is better than nothing. But it's also not much. It shifts King County's unemployment rate by only two-tenths of a percentage point.

Why hasn't the stimulus stimulated us more? I poked around at the "track the money" website, recovery.gov. That answer is pretty simple: Most of the money isn't going to jobs.

A third of the $800 billion was for tax cuts. A huge mistake, in my view, as it largely gave payroll-tax refunds to people, like me, who already have jobs.

Another third went to shore up the states' health and education budgets. I'm OK with this part — thousands of schoolteachers, health-care workers and researchers at the University of Washington have kept their jobs, at least for now.

advertising

The last third was sent out as grants to try to create actual jobs.

The best success there has been in road construction. But elsewhere, most stimulus jobs haven't gone to the jobless. Usually workers were spared from being laid off. That's a good thing, but even there the results were mixed.

Here's a typical example: A group of local cities got $4.9 million in stimulus for community crime prevention. It hasn't all been spent yet, but so far here's what they say they did with it:

"Bellevue sent two officers to 'Force Science Certification Course.' Des Moines purchased a transport van. Federal Way purchased 4 tasers and software. Kenmore purchased equipment for their Active Shooter and patrol/SECTOR program. Kent hired a Population Manager. Kirkland had officers working OT for courtroom security. SeaTac purchased 5 tasers. Seattle retained victims advocates and grant staff positions."

The cities were saved from laying off 24 staffers. But the punch line is that for this stimulus grant, covering 18 cities, the grand total of new jobs created was: One.

That stimulus cash is being used to buy stun guns and vans points to a larger problem. Which is that little of lasting value is being created by the most expensive piece of legislation in American history.

link