Marsha Blackburn

A few weeks ago Vice President Biden announced a six week long campaign to promote the Obama Administration’s claim that “the Recovery Act is working.” The Vice President said “we never thought that $787 billion was going to fill the hole dug by the recession that was created by the policies of the last administration.”

I think the Vice President may have left a few facts out of his comments. Aside from getting the dollar amount of the stimulus package wrong (it’s actually $862 billion, not $787 billion) it seems that the only people who think the stimulus has worked are people inside the Administration, like the Vice President.

Wasn’t it the Vice President’s personal economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, who co-authored the report promising the American people that, with the passage of the Obama stimulus bill, unemployment would never go above 8%? And wasn’t it that same Jared Bernstein who guaranteed that the U.S. economy would support 138.6 million jobs by December of 2010?

It seems pretty clear now that the stimulus failed to do what it was heralded as being able to accomplish. It also seems pretty clear that the “Recovery Tour” will just be more of the same spin that we have seen from the Obama Administration since the beginning of the ill-conceived stimulus plan.

The rest of the world seems determined to rein in out of control spending and reduce deficits, as evidenced by the statements of world leaders at the G-20 Summit. Even the new Conservative British Prime Minister has asked subjects of the crown to weigh in on what to cut from the budget - just like our Republican Leaders here at home- because the Brits health care and out of control spending has taken them to a crisis point. Yet the Obama Administration hasn’t learned the lesson and is talking of a need for another stimulus package – despite all the evidence of the failure of the first one.

With unemployment nationally significantly higher than what the Obama Administration promised, record deficits, and the threat of either a double dip recession, or a jobless recovery, either of which would be disastrous to our economy, it is time to make tough choices and for the Administration to level with the American people