Stimulus defense by the White House

ABC News is reporting that the White House has compiled a report of the 100 best stimulus projects. The report has not been released, so it is not possible to look at all 100 of the projects selected, but ABC News got a copy and has reviewed it. ABC does give two examples: first is the clean up of the site of an industrial park in Plainfield, New Jersey. The cleanup cost 30 million dollars and has created 68 jobs so far. (that's $441,000 per job) ABC also quotes White House Economist Jared Bernstein as saying, "We are creating employment, getting folks in there, cleaning up that environment and this will be a new industrial park creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for decades to come." I assume that Bernstein has misspoken or ABC got the quote wrong. There is no way that an industrial park creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, but given the lack of understanding of economics by the mainstream media, it is not surprising that a quote like this could get past the editors.
The second project from the list highlighted by ABC is the cancer related genome project in which up to 150 scientists will be involved in research with DNA. That is one million dollars per job, and it makes that industrial park cleanup look like a bargain.

ABC goes on to contrast the White House list with the various lists put forward by Republicans of frivolous and unnecessary stimulus projects that do nothing for the growth of the economy. They mention a $70,000 grant to Wake Forest to study how cocaine affects monkeys.

The truth is that, even unseen, the White House list does not answer the criticism of the Stimulus Law. It is not remarkable that the White House can find 100 reasonable projects out of the thousands that were included in the stimulus law. As they say, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. The real question is why there are so many foolish and wasteful projects that were included on the list? Will a White House economist tell us why there is a need to fund a study of how cocaine affects monkeys? How about explaining why we are spending millions of dollars to build tunnels for salamanders under certain highways in Texas? Another favorite is the federally funded study of whether or not college freshmen have sex. For the millions being spent, I could have given them the answer -- YES. In fact, I would have given them the answer for free and saved all that money.

I realize that we are getting close to Election Day and the White House feels compelled to try to defend the indefensible. But it is truly stupid for the White House to issue lists of successful projects. In truth, there is only one way to measure the success or failure of the stimulus: Did it keep unemployment under 8% as Obama promised? the answer is a resounding no. It was not even close. We have not seen rates even close to 8% since shortly after the stimulus was passed. So, with all due respect to ABC and the White House, THE STIMULUS BILL WAS A TOTAL FAILURE THAT WASTED A TRILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!