Posted 10:19 AM by steve

In a Washington Post article that raises the fear that "Job Losses Could Drown Stimulus", let me look at what the article doesn't address:

* Nary a word that Obama's stimulus plan (along with other anti-business actions) might have led to more job losses in January and February than would otherwise have been the case.... nor any mention that the GOP-preferred stimulus would have done a better job of reassuring the market and employers.

While employers do lay off workers in response to past and existing conditions, they also factor the future into account when deciding whether to lay off workers at all and if they do, how many to lay off. Employers who see better times just ahead are going to be much more hesitant to lay off (supposedly) qualified and trained staff if they anticipate they're going to need those employees as conditions improve in the not-too-distant future. That layoffs in January and February continued at pretty much the pre-stimulus pace makes me pretty confident that employers saw nothing in Obama's stimulus that made them think twice about continuing with their plans to reduce staffing. And while this is definitely speculation on my part, I am also pretty confident that there is no way that had the GOP-preferred stimulus passed that employers would have laid off even more workers than they did in response to the Obama stimulus plan.

* While the article acknowledges that much of the (alleged) benefit of Obama's stimulus plan isn't going to kick in for a number of months and years, there is nothing about how critics of Obama's stimulus argued that very point in pushing alternatives, that helping workers who do not now have jobs requires a stimulus plan that kicks in a whole lot faster than sometime in the next 6-18 months. And of course, there is nothing from proponents of alternative stimulus plans that their versions would have done more to get people back to work faster than Obama's plan. Had the GOP-preferred version passed, with its immediate roll backs of taxes, a whole lot more money would have been pumped into the economy by now, money that whether it was spent or saved would have yielded benefits far greater than whatever it is that Obama's stimulus plan is supposed to accomplish when it kicks in.

All in all, just another example of either liberal bias at the Washington Post masquerading as neutral factual reporting and analysis or evidence that the Post reporters and editors just don't understand business or businesses. Me thinks the former although I am open to the possibility that both are true.

And true to form, rather than highlight how Obama's stimulus plan and other actions are making the recession worse, the GOP leadership spends its time squabbling about Rush Limbaugh and making an issue of what is essence a ridiculously immaterial amount of earmark spending. Let me ask the supposedly tactical experts who are advising GOP leaders: which of these issues do you think will resonate more with the people whose votes you NEED to avoid wandering in the desert for the next generation?