The Surge: Porkulus style

The White House was in full spin mode a couple of days ago as it is becoming more and more apparent that porkulus isn’t working. So, obviously the fix to that problem is… more porkulus.

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he is ramping up stimulus spending exponentially in the next three months, allowing the administration to “save or create” 600,000 jobs — four times as many as during the first 100 days since he signed the bill.

“We’re in a position to really accelerate,” Obama said, unveiling plans to boost spending on national parks, summer youth jobs, veterans medical centers, police and teachers.

But this notion of “save or create” is impossible to gage so it provides the Administration perfect cover for coming up with whatever number they feel like as demonstrating that they are fixing the economy.

The President sounded a defensive note in his remarks, saying his administration inherited a collapsing economy. “Had we done nothing, I think its fair to say that most economists believe that we could have gone into a tailspin,” Obama said.

This, of course, is a bald-faced lie as a)we are unaware of even some economists who said we would've "gone into a tailspin" without porkulus and b) Team Obama predicted unemployment would top out at 8% even with porkulus. Again, the chart below put out by Obama’s own economic team betrays the President’s narrative.



But do you know what part of the porkulus surge has us most excited? This:

The White House is launching WhiteHouse.gov/Recovery, a new webpage “that will allow the public to follow America’s Recovery story and hear from people across the country whose lives are being influenced by the Recovery Act."
“The new site provides snapshots of Recovery Act dollars at work, the latest Recovery news and opportunities for visitors to share their Recovery stories through comments, photos and videos, while Recovery.gov remains the go-to site for tracking Recovery Act spending,” the White House said.

That’s right. America’s going scrap-booking this summer.

Exit quote: "You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts but I'm still waiting."

- Tony Fratto, senior member of White House communications shop under President George W. Bush

P.S. More budgetary "pay-go" nonsense forthcoming.