CAGW on Stimulus Spending: Two Years of All Sham, No Wow

(Washington, D.C.) – The nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today issued the following statement on the two-year anniversary of the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), popularly known as the “stimulus” package:

“Two years and $862 billion later, it is time to stop calling the massive boondoggle that was passed by the Obama administration and its allies in Congress the ‘stimulus’ package,’” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “It is clear that this motley collection of pork and reckless, agenda-driven expenditures has only resulted in stagnation and economic lethargy.  The vast majority of jobs it created were public sector jobs, which makes a mockery of President Obama’s oft-repeated commitment that 90 percent of ARRA’s job creation would occur in the private sector.  Instead, the nation is still burdened with a 9 percent jobless rate and a listless recovery.  The expansion of public sector jobs have bloated bureaucracies at the state and federal level and are destined to explode the future pension and healthcare liabilities going out many years. 

“The ARRA created perverse incentives for states, encouraging them to use the money to backfill state budget shortfalls without making the structural budget changes necessary to restore balance to their budgets.  Now, ARRA funds are poised to expire and several states are on the verge of fiscal meltdowns.” 

“The model of using trillions of tax dollars, borrowed from China and others, to jumpstart the economy has been an abject failure.  But, instead of learning from his mistakes and reversing course, President Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2012 budget, which is predicated upon the hugely inflated budget baseline created, in part, by ARRA, cynically attempts to institutionalize those bloated spending levels into the federal budget in perpetuity.  The President and his congressional supporters are grossly out of touch and, with a $14.1 trillion debt, out of options. 

“Taxpayers have time and again told pollsters that they reject the entire premise of the stimulus; they fully comprehend the damage that was perpetrated with the ARRA.  The American people are, as usual, out in front again of their leadership.  Taxpayers support repealing any remaining stimulus funds and sending the money back to the U.S. Treasury to help reduce the country’s burgeoning deficits and pay down the national debt,” 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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