LIBRADEX ** How exactly did this stimulus bill grow the economy?

How exactly did this stimulus bill grow the economy? View another article

How is stimulus spending different than any other spending?

Democrats spent $787 billion in a stimulus bill that was a complete was of money. Not only was it full of was waste (studying ants is stimulus?, studying monkeys getting high is stimulus?) (see here for a link), but there was no chance it was going to be a success. It was doomed from the start.

We already spend tens of billions of dollars on a Federal/state level of roads/bridges. In 2008 before the stimulus we spent $68 billion (BILLION) on the Department of Transportation. Did that spending stimulate the economy? Apparently not. So why would MORE spending stimulate the economy?

Democrats passed the stimulus for a few reasons:
1 They wanted to pay back their union supporters who donate almost exclusively to Democrats
2 They wanted to pay back environmental supporters who donate almost exclusively to Democrats
3 They think all government spending is stimulus
4 They love FDR and wanted to emulate him
5 They don't care at all about deficits.

As for FDR. FDR (and Hoover) both tried stimulus since the 1929 stock market crash, but we didn't really have a functioning economy until 1946. That's a long time. It was a miserable time of high (13% average) unemployment, yet Democrats to this day think FDR is a great leader. Why? Because during FDR's term Democrats ruled almost exclusively, and many leftist laws were passed. "High unemployment, miserable suffering for the American people for decades? Who cares! We Democrats look fondly back on the 1930s because we were in charge."

Back to today, the "stimulus" looked like a re-tread of FDR's stimulus bills. But this isn't the 1930s. Back in the 1930s you could be a farmhand one day, lose your job, then work for the TVA the next day. Labor was mostly manual, and training wasn't necessary.

Fast forward to today. Most heavy/civil construction jobs require training because machinery is involved. You can't have a male graphic designer or a female accountant lose their job and just pick up a shovel building a freeway overpass.

And that is reflected in the numbers. Before the recession, at its peak, heavy/civil construction had only 1 million workers TOTAL working the entire industry. Right now there is about 826,000 people in the industry. Look at the BLS.gov site here to see for yourself.

So we've lost about 187,000 jobs heavy/civil construction since its peak in 2007; that's WITH all of those hundreds of billions of stimulus spending, as well as regular Federal/state spending on transportation.

But we lost over 4.7 MILLION jobs in 2009 alone !

So we lost over 4.7 million jobs... and the peak of heavy/civil construction has only 1 million jobs... and we've only lost 187,000 jobs since its peak... why would we assume the stimulus bill would help our unemployment?

The answer is no one did. The BLS is part of the Federal Government, surely members of Congress know that heavy/civil construction is a very small industry. So why did they pass the $787 billion stimulus that had all these heavily unionized construction projects, renewable energy, and studying monkeys getting high)?

2 words: Heavily Unionized.