Obama's Stimulus Is Working Perfectly

If you've lost you job recently, then you should celebrate. Barack Obama says it was all part of the plan.

"In a little over 100 days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended," he said. He said that thanks to the $787 billion spending bill he signed in February, "We've been able to pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink."

How many jobs will the salt marsh harvest mouse create or save?

Judging your own stimulus plan is like a self-scored IQ test. You always win.

Of course, when you honestly compare Bush's stimulus plan to Barack Obama's, you get an idea of which philosophy performs better.

Obama -5.2%
Bush +23.8%

Which would you prefer?

Obama: We Did Everything Perfectly

It's not our fault that the $787 billion porkulus bill isn't working the way we said it would.

"It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year," White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. "Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that."

And, said The One: "There's nothing that we would have done differently."

How dare anyone question his predictive power?

Obama Changes The Definition of Success

When your program is a demonstrable failure, what to do? How about grade inflation?

With public confidence in the stimulus package showing signs of ebbing, the Obama administration is continuing to sell its impact with nation-wide events and press appearances.

Today brings this explanation, from Christina Romer, the chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisers: Stimulus spending, Romer told the Financial Times, is “going to ramp up strongly through the summer and the fall.”

“We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months. The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards,” Romer said.

We’ve known for some time that the money takes a while to get out the door.

But top Obama advisers haven’t always been so cautious in predicting how the long the stimulus would take to be felt.

Back in February, with Congress moving swiftly to approve President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, White House budget director Peter Orszag said the benefits of the stimulus would be “take weeks to months” to be felt.

Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, was even more optimistic: “You'll see the effects begin almost immediately,” Summers told CNN in February.

I guess this means that they're going to stop boasting that they've already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs.