Democrats worried about lack of stimulus

Why, it could never have impacted it at all like they claimed. Most of the money hasn't been spent and won't be spent until 2010. It was always about paying off constituents and expanding programs. Now they're talking about another stimulus! [Link]

And well they should. Democrats put down an $800 billion bet and locked Republicans out of the room in placing it. They know their party and their President completely owns the results — and those aren’t looking good at all. And like any bad gambler, they want to double down on a lost hand:

Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.

Yesterday, Obama took time out of his first presidential trip to Moscow to defend the $787 billion stimulus package, arguing that the measure was the right medicine at the right time. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he told ABC News.

Back in Washington, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.

“It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year,” White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. “Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that.”

But that wasn’t what the White House or the Democrats promised when they passed Porkulus. Barack Obama’s economic advisers demanded fast action, rather than reasoned debate and negotiation, to adopt their recommendations in order to avoid a spike in unemployment in the near term. They got what they wanted — a spending plan that funded just about every liberal fantasy of the last 30 years, save universal health care — and it didn’t do anything to stop rapid unemployment.

I also hate the 'save or create' jobs line. That doesn't mean anything and can't be measured. I know it's expecting too much to hope that the media might call them on this crap. Unemployment is already higher than they claimed it would be if we didn't pass the stimulus.