CAGW Pans Biden's Comments on Recovery

(Washington, D.C.) – The nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), today panned Vice President Joe Biden’s recent assertions that a robust economic recovery is underway as a result of the administration’s policies and the $862 billion stimulus spending package.   

On April 23, 2010, the vice president claimed during a speech in Pittsburgh that the country would soon be “creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month,” ushering in a “Summer of Recovery.”  Labor Day is rapidly approaching and the vice president defended the administration’s pie-in-the-sky predictions about the recovery yesterday when he said, “no doubt we're moving in the right direction.”  Unfortunately, recent economic indicators paint a much different picture. 

Existing home sales fell 27 percent in July to the lowest level in 15 years, which is a strong indicator that the economy is extremely fragile.  In addition, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment remains unchanged at 9.5 percent. 

“The Obama administration’s stimulus bill has failed spectacularly and no amount of bloviating by Vice President Biden changes the facts on the ground.  The administration has exhausted its limited economic tool kit, running the gamut from government spending to even more government spending, and produced nothing.  They have created virtually no jobs in the private sector, nor have other economic indicators improved.  Yet, administration mouthpieces and their equally economically challenged allies in Congress continue to pat themselves on the back for a job well done.  Taxpayers know this is not the case,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.

An August 3, 2010 report by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) demonstrated that billions of stimulus dollars have been wasted on programs such as $1.2 million to convert an abandoned train station into a museum in New Jersey, $762,372 to develop interactive dance software in North Carolina, and $554,763 for new windows in a visitor’s center that closed in 2007 in Washington.  In several instances, stimulus spending has actually reduced private sector employment; in Normandy Park, Washington, $3.8 million was spent on a “streetscaping” project that drove customers away from local businesses, causing a local restaurant to fire two employees. 

“The administration and members of Congress need to wake up from their daze, develop policies to cut government spending, reduce the size of government, and decrease the tax burden for future generations, otherwise the ‘direction’ that we are moving in will continue to be a one-way street to fiscal ruin,” concluded Schatz. 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government. 

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