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Obama stimulus: $246,436 per job

Economic analyst: Funds could have paid 2.6 million American salaries

Posted: December 08, 2009
11:27 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package has cost taxpayers $246,436 for every new job the administration claims to have created, according to an economic analyst.

While the administration claims its stimulus has saved 640,329 jobs from February through October, analyst Ed Yardeni declares, "That amounts to $246,436 per job based on the $157.8 [billion] that has been awarded so far!"

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Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research Inc., has worked as chief investment strategist at Deutsche Bank, Prudential Equity Group and Oak Associates and as chief economist for C.J. Lawrence, Prudential Securities and E.F. Hutton. He notes that average compensation to payroll employees during October, on an annualized basis, was $59,867.

"If the government had simply used the funds awarded so far to pay for a year's worth of labor, that would have paid for 2.6 million jobs!" he wrote.

As WND reported, with an unemployment rate soaring over 10 percent, Congress is gearing up to pass yet another economic "stimulus" package, perhaps as soon as January.

The Los Angeles Times reports President Obama and fellow Democrats in particular are in the process of assembling a new jobs package that would devote unspecified billions of dollars to projects meant to put people back on payrolls in 2010. The House version of "stimulus 3.0" may even be pushed through as quickly as this month.

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx



More than 7 million Americans have lost jobs since the beginning of the recession two years ago, the Associated Press reports. A Labor Department report indicated there were an average of 6.3 unemployed people for every job opening
in October.

A recent online survey
of more than 970 jobseekers conducted by Job.com revealed that 64 percent of respondents don't believe the stimulus plan created more jobs for Americans.

"Our jobseekers are obviously frustrated," Job.com CEO and President Brian Alden said.

A full 53 percent of respondents opposed a new economic stimulus package.

The jobless rate has reached 10 percent, a statistic Obama said is "staggering." However, he called for more federal spending today, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession."

"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

He added, "Our work is far from done."

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