NObama!!

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February, the Treasury Department announced today.

The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year.

The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.

What’s left to say at this point? All I can do is try to contextualize this for you: According to CBO, based on an analysis of the deeply deceitful numbers presented to it by Reid and Obama, the national panacea of health-care reform will save us $132 billion over the next 10 years. Which means the feds blew through our big decade-long ObamaCare refund in about … 17 days last month. (Savings from 2020 to 2029 are estimated to be $1 trillion, but follow the “deeply deceitful” link for insight into that. Even CBO scoffs at trying to predict any numbers that far out.)

Would it make you feel better to read about a Republican yelling at Geithner? Okay, let’s do it!

“It just defies common sense for this administration to pretend that you’re paying any attention at all to deficit reduction,” Rep. John Culberson, R-TX, told Geithner. “It doesn’t square with reality.”…

“If you care about fiscal responsibility, there is no way you could have argued that the response from the government should have been to stand back and let this economy collapse – that would have been far more costly,” Geithner said…

“You’ve spent more money in less time than any administration in history, you have driven the deficits to unprecedented levels, and you’re trying to sell a bill of goods to the country claiming that you’re going to create the mother of all entitlements, insure 30 million more Americans, and we’re going to save you money,” he continued. “Nobody believes that.”

Not true. Supposedly 10 percent of the public believes it, but give them another year or two of reading stories like this. That number will come down to one or two percent before too long.

There’s no trendline in the AP’s story so let’s see if we can make our own. Two weeks ago, Gallup found a 39/52 split opposed to reconciliation; on the same day, Fox News found just 34 percent wanted Obama to pass the bill without GOP support versus 59 percent who thought he should start over if no compromise was possible. Since then, The One’s mumbled about the Olympic spirit, declared — for maybe the fifth time since last year — that the time for talk was over, and hit the road to demand an “up or down” vote on a bill that the public hates because he owes that to the public.

Looks like his hard work paid off. The needle appears to have moved.

A new Associated Press-GfK Poll finds a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, which suggests President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have a political opening to push their plan. Half of all Americans say health care should be changed a lot or “a great deal,” and only 4 percent say it shouldn’t be changed at all…

More than four in five Americans say it’s important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And 68 percent say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support…

Many of his allies are baffled, because Americans clearly want change, and some of the individual components of the Democrats’ health care agenda seem popular. Moreover, the public has not embraced the Republicans’ overall approach to legislating, giving lower approval ratings to GOP lawmakers than to Democrats, although both parties fare badly.

Just 27 percent want Democrats to ram it through. Do note that the question here is slightly different than in the Gallup and Fox News polls. Theoretically, the AP’s sample might support reconciliation eventually, if further attempts at compromise with the GOP failed. But that’s academic: There aren’t going to be any further attempts, and frankly I’m skeptical that many who oppose reconciliation now would come around to it down the line. After nine months of this garbage, who seriously believes that just a little more effort at detente will break the impasse? If you don’t want them to go it alone now, you don’t want them to go it alone period, so wavering Dems will simply have to swallow that 68-percent figure. Good luck, kids.

Exit question: Just 24 percent of Democrats are “very enthusiastic” to vote in November compared to 42 percent of Republicans. If this travesty passes, which figure will see more movement? Remember, the left is counting on ObamaCare to goose turnout.

Update: Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen ponder why Obama can’t move the numbers on health care. Can’t he? They seem to have moved here.

One reason may be that he keeps talking about details of the proposal while voters are looking at the issue in a broader context. Polling conducted earlier this week shows that 57% of voters believe that passage of the legislation would hurt the economy, while only 25% believe it would help. That makes sense in a nation where most voters believe that increases in government spending are bad for the economy…

But the bigger problem is that people simply don’t trust the official projections. People in Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office, but 81% of voters say it’s likely the plan will end up costing more than projected. Only 10% say the official numbers are likely to be on target…

The final piece of the puzzle is that the overwhelming majority of voters have insurance coverage, and 76% rate their own coverage as good or excellent. Half of these voters say it’s likely that if the congressional health bill becomes law, they would be forced to switch insurance coverage—a prospect hardly anyone ever relishes. These numbers have barely moved for months: Nothing the president has said has reassured people on this point.

It’s a poll of Americans, not foreigners, so it’s not so much evidence that we are less respected than that we perceive ourselves to be. I hope The One finds comfort in that fact when these numbers start to shake out in November. Devastating. The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency. “This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations. On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats… A May 2009 survey by the pollsters found the public saw the Democratic and Republican parties as equally able to handle national security (41 percent trusted Democrats more, and 43 percent trusted Republicans more.) On conducting the war on terrorism, the two parties were tied at 41 percent. The GOP leads by 13 on “keeping America safe” and by 31 on “ensuring a strong military,” both traditional advantages. But on the “standing in the world” question, I’m at a loss. That issue was at the very innermost core of Bush’s poor public image; there was no bar set lower for Obama than improving international perceptions of America. Republicans can be expected to say that the country’s image has dropped, but I figured nearly 100 percent of Democrats and a heavy majority of indies would see The One as an improvement over Dubya. And yet. I can’t find crosstabs by party at the Third Way site but I assume these numbers are being driven in part by lefty disenchantment with Obama’s willingness to continue some Bush policies (Afghanistan, tribunals, drone attacks, indefinite detention, etc.). It’s still surprising that they’d say the U.S.’s image is actually worse now than under Bush, although I suppose the reasoning there is that the world had such high hopes for a kinder, gentler, more Bambi-like America and to see those dreams dashed has only made them more embittered, etc. I’d love to see the party crosstabs on this, too. Hmmmm: Fifty-seven percent of likely voters approve of Obama’s handling of national security—ten points higher than his general 47 percent approval rating, according to a new Democracy Corps/GQR/Third Way poll out Monday. Where Obama loses: interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, where a 51-44 percent majority disapproves. Republicans have hammered the administration for its decision to read the alleged Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights, and the poll results show the message is sticking… The memo, prepared by veteran Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner, advises Democrats to avoid what has so far been one of their key counter-arguments: Comparing the underwear bomber to so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid, who was read his Miranda rights after the Bush administration arrested him. “Voters resist the argument that the Obama administration simply handled the Christmas bomber in the same way the Bush administration handled the ‘shoe bomber’ case; this sounds political, and produces a weak response,” they wrote. In a sane world, these numbers would give Lindsey Graham all the reason he needs to walk away from the “compromise” to bring detainees to Illinois in exchange for trying KSM in a tribunal. Although, with numbers this bad, Obama may walk away from closing Gitmo himself. He can rationalize making a move that looks “weak” if he’s perceived as strong in other areas of national security, but with a 14-point swing since last year, he has to do something. Democrats already walk with a limp because of O-Care; with their other leg now wobbling too, they’ll collapse by November without some help. Exit question: Who wants to volunteer to teach tenderhearted Democrats how to talk tough on terrorism? (Pssst: Don’t mention jihad.)

"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) said. "He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive." 

Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: "I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/03/08/massa_rahm_emanuel_would_sell_his_own_mother_for_votes.html 

New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa may not be ready to leave Washington, hinting in an interview he may rescind his resignation, scheduled for 5 P.M. Monday.

On his weekly radio show, Massa, one of thirty-nine Democrats who voted against last year’s health care bill, said House leadership was orchestrating a public relations campaign against him for the sake of accelerating his resignation and lowering the number of votes Democratic whips must secure for health care’s passage.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill,” Massa said. “And now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.”

Reports surfaced Wednesday indication Massa was retiring, citing recurrence of cancer, while others still said the freshman Democrat was under review by a House ethics panel forsexually harassing a junior male aide.

At various points in the hour-and-a-half-long broadcast, Massa indicated he would rescind his resignation if the Pelosi-Hoyer power play became national news.

“I’m not going to be a Congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon. The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”

He acknowledged, however, that reneging on his promise to resign would revive a stalled ethics probe into his reported sexual misconduct with staff.

In response to a caller suggesting he remain in office, Massa said: “That’s very kind of you, but understand what that means for me. It means that a group of lawyers are going to try and rip me and my family limb from limb. And you’ve already seen it in the newspapers. It’s a piranha feeding frenzy.”

Barack Obama may have promised Hope and Change, but Mark Halperin writes today in Time that Obama has brought More of the Same instead.  That doesn’t extend to policy, Halperin argues, although Obama keeps backing into George Bush’s policies by default.  Halperin mentions Afghanistan, but here he forgets that Obama ran on the promise to fight in Afghanistan more robustly than Bush did, and so far he’s kept that promise after wasting four months trying to make up his mind.  On military commissions, the Patriot Act, and even Gitmo at the moment, Obama has found himself pushed back to Bush-era policies as his own unrealistic promises collapse around him.

Halperin, though, refers to process in his criticism, and says that Obama didn’t learn from his predecessor even while spending most of two years blasting him from the campaign trail:

Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama’s biggest missteps as president would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama’s 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation’s course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush’s most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today.

This is not to say that Obama has maintained Bush’s policies, although his administration’s continuity on issues ranging from Afghanistan to Wall Street has alienated the left. And he certainly hasn’t done himself any favors by failing to inspire the general public to rally around his agenda. But Obama’s stumbles atop the high-wire of running the federal government has created perhaps the greatest danger to his presidency, and they are oddly reminiscent of the misguided practices which tripped up his predecessor.

These are the four mistakes Halperin accuses Obama of repeating:

• No chief economic spokesperson
• Failure to integrate policy, politics, and communication
• Tying his administration’s fate too closely to Congressional leaders
• Failure to empower Cabinet members on domestic policy

Three of these are inside-baseball issues, hardly the kind of supposed failures that would cause 20-point shifts in public opinion polls.  The second makes almost no sense at all; Halperin accuses the White House of failing to move “strong, serious ideas” from his policy wonks to Obama’s speeches in an effective manner.  That may be the only thing working as intended in this White House.  The President gives good speeches almost every day, and has “dramatic public events” almost every week.  Obama’s failure is not recognizing that his “strong, serious ideas” are outside the mainstream in the first place, and that his speeches aren’t enough to convince a center-right nation to adopt his leftist agenda.

Halperin hits the bullseye on the third point, but fails to understand why it happened:

When Bush ran for president, he, like Obama, suggested he would regularly cross his own party’s congressional wing when he thought they were dead wrong. And Obama, like Bush, has lashed himself over and over to the political fortunes of the Capitol Hill portion of his party, allowing the agenda and vision of Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid, and a covey of mostly liberal committee chairs to define the public image of the Democratic Party and determine what his administration can accomplish.

Bush got less interested in leading on legislative issues after 9/11, and his big foray back into that realm in 2005 with Social Security reform flopped on partisan bickering.  Obama, on the other hand, has yet to take any interest in leadership at all — and on his own policy agenda items, such as ObamaCare.  His problem is that he’stoo interested in the integration of politics and communications; all he ever does is give speeches.   From the first days of his presidency, Obama has abdicated that role to Nancy Pelosi, and more than a year later, still hasn’t demanded it back.

Why did he let Pelosi run wild?   Obama had no experience as an executive, and allowed himself to get rolled by party leadership.  Many of us warned about his inexperience during the campaign.  Obama not only had no experience as an executive, he had very little experience as an effective and actice legislator.  It’s not much of a surprise now that Obama has delegated most of the policy work back to his party leadership, which he mostly did in the Senate and in the Illinois legislature.

The real lesson here is not that Obama is making the same mistakes as Bush.  It’s that Obama was unprepared for this job in the first place, and the media didn’t bother to report that when it counted.

I recently asked several senior administration officials, separately, to name a foreign leader with whom Barack Obama has forged a strong personal relationship during his first year in office. A lot of hemming and hawing ensued.

One official mentioned French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is scheduled to bring his glamorous wife to the White House residence this month for a couples dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. But in France, Sarkozy's bitterness toward Obama, the product of several perceived snubs, is an open secret, reported widely in the French press. In a speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September Sarkozy appeared to mock Obama's signature disarmament initiative, saying "we are living in a real world, not a virtual world."

Angela Merkel's name also came up: Obama and the German chancellor, I was told, share a down-to-business pragmatism. But Merkel, too, has been conspicuously cool toward Obama ever since he made Berlin a stop on his 2008 election campaign. She stopped him then from appearing at the Brandenburg Gate and was said to be miffed last November when Obama didn't show for ceremonies celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Anyway, diplomats say that Merkel has a much warmer relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

No one named Gordon Brown. That's fairly remarkable: The relationship between the sitting British prime minister and U.S. president has been consistently close over the past 30 years. Think Reagan and Thatcher, Clinton and Blair, Bush and Blair. But Obama has been portrayed as dissing Brown ever since he presented him with a set of DVDs as a gift during their first meeting in Washington a year ago. Last fall the British press reported that the White House had turned down five requests for Obama to meet Brown one-on-one at the United Nations or the G-20 summit.

Finally, I was offered a name I didn't expect: Dmitry Medvedev. Obama, I was assured, has built a solid relationship with the Russian president during their several bilateral meetings, which have focused in part on a new nuclear arms control agreement that both could count as a distinctive achievement. But the deal hasn't been clinched -- maybe because Vladimir Putin, whom Obama has held at arm's length, doesn't like it. And could it really be that an American president has found his closest foreign partner in the Kremlin?

The paradox here is that Obama remains hugely popular abroad -- from Germany and France to countries where anti-Americanism has recently been a problem, such as Turkey and Indonesia. His following means that, in democratic countries at least, leaders have a strong incentive to befriend him. And yet this president appears, so far, to have no genuine foreign friends. In this he is the opposite of George W. Bush, who was reviled among the foreign masses but who forged close ties with a host of leaders -- Aznar of Spain, Uribe of Colombia, Sharon and Olmert of Israel, Koizumi of Japan.

Jealousy or political rivalry may play a part -- Sarkozy is one of several Europeans who have wanted to assume the role of Obama's closest ally and reacted poorly when he didn't respond. But another big cause seems to be lack of interest on Obama's part. Focused intently on his domestic agenda, the president is said to be reluctant to take time to build relationships with foreign leaders. If something has needed to be done or decided, he has readily picked up the phone. If not, he generally hasn't been available.

Obama also hasn't hesitated to publicly express displeasure with U.S. allies. He sparred all last year with Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu; he expressed impatience when Japan's Yukio Hatoyama balked at implementing a military base agreement. He has repeatedly criticized Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, and he gave up the videoconferences Bush used to have with Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki.

An argument can be made that none of this matters. Bush, after all, was often criticized for depending too heavily on personal relationships -- remember how he looked into Putin's soul? -- and his pals didn't save his administration from being universally condemned as "unilateralist." The Obama administration, in contrast, can argue that it has done pretty well in lining up European support on key matters such as Afghanistan and Iran. And Obama's personal popularity continues to provide leverage with leaders around the world, whether they hit it off with him or not.

Still, it's worth wondering: Would Sarkozy have fought French public opinion and sent more troops to Afghanistan (he has refused) if he had been cultivated more by Obama? Would Israel's Netanyahu be willing to take more risks in the (moribund) Middle East peace process if he believed he could count on this U.S. president? Would Karzai cooperate more closely with U.S. commanders in the field if Obama had embraced him?

The answers seem obvious. In foreign as well as domestic affairs, coolness has its cost.

His exact words this afternoon: “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.” And so he will, so he will. Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit… “The Congressman is looking for development of bipartisan consensus,” Matheson’s press secretary Alyson Heyrend wrote to THE WEEKLY STANDARD on February 22. “It’s too early to know if that will occur.” Asked if one could infer that if no Republican votes in favor of the bill (i.e. if a bipartisan consensus is not reached) then Rep. Matheson would vote no, Heyrend replied: “I would not infer anything. I’d wait to see what develops, starting with the health care summit on Thursday.” Scott Matheson’s plenty qualified for the job (follow the link for his resume), but it shows you how desperate The One is to win votes in the House at this point that he wouldn’t even care about the optics here. Dropping this announcement on the very day that he’s hosting Matheson’s brother to twist his arm on O-Care? What’s next? Televising the bribes he’s been making to inconvenient Democratic primary challengers? Put the graft on C-SPAN, Barry! Oh, did I mention that Stupak’s more convinced than ever that the Senate bill, as is, is dead dead dead in the House? If they can’t figure out a way to “fix” Reid’s bill before asking the House to vote on it — which may be procedurally impossible — then it’s finito. Unless Obama can scrounge up some more federal judgeships, I guess.

The Obama administration continued its “smart power” efforts with America’s closest ally by demanding that the UK negotiate with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  Hillary Clinton appeared with Argentina’s President Kristina Kirchner yesterday for a press conference in which she pushed for talks to settle the status of the islands — which the British already consider completely settled now.  Nile Gardiner calls Hillary’s comments a “slap in the face” to the UK.

First, the transcript of the presser:

QUESTION: (In Spanish)
And for the Secretary, it’s about the Falklands. The – President Fernandez talked about possible friendly mediation. Would the U.S. be considered – would the U.S. (inaudible) consider some kind of mediation role between the UK and Argentina over the Falklands? Thank you.

PRESIDENT DE KIRCHNER: (Via interpreter) (Inaudible) what we have (inaudible) by both countries as a friendly country of both Argentina and the UK, so as to get both countries to sit down at the table and address these negotiations within the framework of the UN resolutions strictly. We do not want to move away from that in any letter whatsoever, any comma, of what has been stated by dozens of UN resolutions and resolutions by its decolonization committee. That’s the only thing we’ve asked for, just to have them sit down at the table and negotiate. I don’t think that’s too much, really, in a very conflicted and controversial world, complex in terms.

SECRETARY CLINTON: And we agree. We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way.

And another:

QUESTION: (In Spanish)
Interpreter: The journalist was just asking how the U.S. intends to negotiate to get the United Kingdom to sit at the table and address the Malvinas issue.

SECRETARY CLINTON: As to the first point, we want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.

Except, of course, that Britain doesn’t believe there is any need to talk about it at all.  The British have been the only country to occupy the Falklands, which were uninhabited when they arrived in the 19th century.  Until a few decades ago, no one seriously challenged British sovereignty on the island.  Argentina started a war over them in the 1980s, which Margaret Thatcher ended decisively.  As far as London is concerned, that ended the discussion rather neatly, especially since the residents of the Falklands apparently prefer the status quo.

Gardiner wonders what Hillary was thinking:

Clinton has demonstrated, not the first time, strikingly poor judgment as Secretary of State. While currying favour with a third rate kleptocracy in Latin America, she is alienating America’s most loyal and valuable friend at a critically important time. She also underestimates the resolve of the British people, who will never negotiate the future of the Falkland Islands. If the Argentines want the Falklands they will have to fight for them, and if they choose to do so they will be emphatically defeated, just as they were in 1982. Hillary Clinton can cry for Argentina if she wants to, but the Falklands will be forever British.

Maybe this White House hasn’t recalled this yet, but the British are fighting alongside of us in Afghanistan, where we desperately need them to stay.   If Britain suddenly discovers a need to deploy to the Falklands, especially because of American meddling, I’m quite certain London would need little encouragement to redeploy from their NATO commitment to do so.

When Obama ran for office, he claimed he wanted to restore our standing with our allies.  Who knew he was such a history buff?  It seems that Obama wants to restore our standing with the British to its status … in 1812.

Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech

Feel the realignment.

-In Colorado a recent Rasmussen poll found his approval at 45/53. Research 2000 found his favorability at 46/47 in January.

-In Florida Rasmussen found his approval at 45/54 and Quinnipiac’s latest found it at 45/49.

-In Indiana Rasmussen has his approval at 44/54 and Research 2000 finds his favorability at 46/49…

-In Nevada Rasmussen finds his approval at 46/54. We found 44/52 in in January.

There are nine states in all but I’m giving you numbers for four where there’s a Democrat in trouble in the local Senate race and The One will be expected to — giggle — campaign for him. It’s working for Reid, isn’t it? In fact, just this afternoon, the White House declared its support for Blanche Lincoln (whose own red state didnot flip) against newly minted lefty primary challenger Bill Halter. Why they’d do that instead of staying out of the race entirely is beyond me — the Obama imprimatur will be pure liability if she makes it to the general — but that’s the canniness we’ve come to expect after their successes in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

With the bludgeon of reconciliation now being wielded in earnest, I think it’s officially time to start predictions on where The One’s approval rating will settle if they push ObamaCare through. Over/under is 41.

The first clip, from MSNBC, finds The One congratulating himself for having saved America from a new depression. Which is awfully sweet, but alas, untrue:

I’m watching Obama claim that it is “largely thanks to the Recovery Act” that the recession didn’t become a depression. I supported the stimulus, and still do. But this claim is ludicrous…

DId the stimulus help? Sure. But Recovery.gov currently has a nifty graphic showing that of ARRA’s $787 billion in budget authority, the government has currently disbursed about $287 billion. You’d have to posit some really remarkable multipliers for the stimulus to think that this prevented us from sliding into the Great Depression…

So the administration is claiming that by spending less than $300 billion, it managed to prevent more than $700 billion in economic decline–in other words, that the multiplier for their spending was higher than two. They’re saying that every dollar they spent increased GDP by more than $2.

What’s amazing to me about his depression claim is that he’s repeating the key political mistake he made in selling the stimulus: Namely, gambling on the fact that he knows precisely how bad the problem is. We’ve all seen the charts at Innocent Bystanders comparing the White House’s post-stimulus projections for unemployment to the actual numbers, but I don’t think most people realize how deeply that mismatch has penetrated among the public. Via Taegan Goddard, see for yourself what the latest NYT poll found:

Six percent. And as David Freddoso notes, the number who say it’ll never create any jobs keeps on creeping up. So between public disappointment, toxic reports about stimulus money being funneled into programs that are actually being slashed, and moronic tin-eared soundbites from Joe Biden about how we totally got our money’s worth from this thing, The One has a major political problem. Under those circumstances, with so much uncertainty, you’d think the last thing he’d want to do is raise expectations again by pronouncing us out of the woods economically, at least as far as a new depression is concerned. But nope — here he is, patting himself on the back. I hope he’s right, but after reading things like this, I’m a lot less confident than he is.

Did the Porkulus bill create any private-sector jobs? Most of us have said no, and according to the CBS/NYT poll, 94% of Americans agree.  You can count retiring Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) among them.  When asked what he plans to do with his time after his term expires, Bayh says that he will worry about that when the time comes.  If he chooses to start a business in the private sector, though, he’s sure he will outperform Congress in job creation:

“[I]f I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

That serves as a rather stinging accusation, coming from a man who voted for Porkulus a year ago.  Bear in mind, though, that Bayh is careful to say “in the last six months” as a qualifier. Bayh could just mean that Congress ignored the crisis in unemployment for the last six months in order to ride their health-care hobby horse, and that certainly would be true — and closer to the frustration Bayh vented in his retirement announcement yesterday.

He may be offering that dodge as a way to rationalize his support for a failed stimulus policy, but it doesn’t wash. The Obama administration said that its $865 billion plan would start creating jobs in larger numbers in the third and fourth quarters of 2009. That hasn’t materialized; net employment has dropped in an almost-uninterrupted decline from the end of 2007 to now.

Either way, though, Bayh’s parting shot underscores what Republicans have said all along about the Democratic agenda — that it’s based in ideology, not in reality, and that it has little to do with the real concerns of Americans. Including, apparently, Evan Bayh, but not including CNN, as Greg Hengler notes at Townhall:

CNN just can’t believe that Bayh could conclude that working in the private sector could have more impact than being in Congress in terms of job creation. It’s actually kind of cute to see religious believers in big government bitterly clinging to their ideology.

Update: Apoliticus has some fun musing on a John Edwards-like twist to this rift between Bayh and Congress.

Allahpundit is probably right that Pres. Obama’s attempt to spin the “stimulus” law as a success is politically futile. However, the Obama administration is going to spend all week on the effort (“More Cowbell!”), so it is worth a look at how their first big project ended up with a six percent approval rate in the Dem-friendly CBS/NYT poll. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has the full timeline (.pdf); these are just a few of the grim milestones on the Road to Nowhere:

• February 17, 2009: The nation’s first Recovery Act project is announced, a new bridge in Tuscumbia, MO. CNN later reports on “A New ‘Bridge to Nowhere’.”
• April 13, 2009:The Administration announces the 2,000th Recovery Act project, but an ABC News fact check reveals that far fewer projects are actually underway, and may not come in under budget as claimed.
• May 27, 2009: President Obama marks the 100 day anniversary of the Recovery Act by claiming that 150,000 jobs have been saved or created. Politifact calls this “not much better than a guess presented as a fact.”
• July 27, 2009: Congressional Democrats claim highway and transit spending from the stimulus has created or sustained 48,000 jobs. ProPublica says “the estimate suffers from what’s become a common malaise in the stimulus world: fuzzy math.” ProPublica found “a reliance on raw head counts — which tend to inflate the numbers by giving full- and part-time jobs the same weight — and by counting the same workers two, three or four times.”
• October 15, 2009: The administration announces that contracts awarded with Recovery Act funds have created or saved 30,383 jobs. The Associated Press found “some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.”
• October 30, 2009: The administration announces that the Recovery Act has saved or created 640,329 total jobs. On November 19, the Administration admits that they cannot confirm their claim.
• December 18, 2009: The Administration sends out a memo saying they will no longer count jobs “created or saved,” but instead count jobs funded in whole or in part by the Recovery Act. But they brought it back in the most recent report from Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

What leaps out from the timeline is that the Democrats not only oversold the Recovery Act, but continued to oversell it — not just with these claims but also puffery from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose from 7.6% to over 10 percent. In addition, the adminsitration was embarrassed by a stream of news stories about wasteful stimulus projects like the $3.4 million spent for an alligator crossing, the million-dollar guardrail, and so on. It is small wonder so few believe the Recovery Act was a success.

The holdouts tend to be in the establishment media, like the New York Times. David Leonhardt relies on models from economic search firms, perhaps those who have been continually surprised as unemployment rose “unexpectedly.” Others will tell you that the stimulus at best “saved” jobs, but did not “create” them. The Congressional Budget Office will tell you that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.” And when you look at those competing views, you will find a general agreement that the jobs that got saved were primarily in government, and education (which is mostly government). In the private sector, the Recovery Act is killing some jobs, as it extracts money to prop up the government spending. In addition, Leonhardt leaves out arguments that that other policies may have been not only cheaper, but also more effective. He also omits warnings from the very sources he cites that any short-term gain from the stimulus should be balanced against the medium-term risk of a debt crisis. That road is worse than a Road to Nowhere.

The AP gets to use its favorite adverb again, and this time it’s even more ridiculous when reading the spin on the latest unemployment news.  Initial jobless claims rose again last week, and as the AP explains, it probably comes in part with the massive snowstorm that blanketed the mid-Atlantic region.  But if that’s the case, then why would they describe it with the word “unexpectedly” (via HA reader DogSoldier and JWF) ?

The number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as heavy snows caused layoffs to rise.

In addition, many state agencies in the mid-Atlantic and New England regions that process the claims were closed due to the storms and are now clearing out backlogs, a Labor Department analyst said.

The department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose by 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 496,000. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a drop to 455,000.

Bad weather can cause job losses in construction and other industries sensitive to weather.

That much is true.  Construction workers laid off from stalled projects can claim unemployment until the employer and/or customer is ready to resume.  Since that’s the case, one might have expected the number of jobless claims to increase, especially considering the severity of the storm and the inability of cities to clear the streets.  Washington DC had to shut down for most of a week because of the weather.

So why didn’t the geniuses that the media love to quote “expect” this?

However, not everyone is convinced that the weather is the primary motivator for the rise in joblessness.  The stock market dropped sharply after the announcement (via Geoff A):

Stocks opened sharply lower Thursday after the government said weekly jobless claims ramped up more than expected last week.

The Dow was down more than 150 points at the open. All 30 components were lower, led by Coca-Cola [KO  53.21    -1.95  (-3.54%)   ], Caterpillar [CAT  55.16    -1.80  (-3.16%)   ] and American Express [AXP  37.46    -0.95  (-2.47%)   ].

The Labor Department reported that the number of workers filing jobless claims jumped to 496,000, well ahead of estimates of 455,000. Though the government said some of the increase could have been due to a backlog of claims processing due to inclement East Coast weather, the trend was enough to rattle markets.

The problem with the snow explanation is that this is not just a one-week anomaly.  The four-week average of initial jobless claims has risen by 30,000 over the last month, a trend that indicates that more businesses have continued cutbacks.  On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a sudden and significant increase in mass layoff events for January:

Employers took 1,761 mass layoff actions in January that resulted in the separation of 182,261 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer. Both mass layoff events and initial claims increased from the prior month after four consecutive over-the-month decreases. In January, 486 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 62,556 initial claims. Both figures increased over the month–the first increases since August 2009 for events and since September 2009 for initial claims. (See table 1.)

That doesn’t come from heavy snowfalls, but from a persistently negative outlook on economic growth.  Businesses are still paring back their staffs and reluctant to commit cash to payroll, nor capital to expansion.  The market is recognizing that today.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for President Obama.

The only other time the Approval Index was this low came in late December as the U.S. Senate prepared to approve its version of health care reform (see trends). Most voters continue to oppose the proposed health care plan.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That is the lowest level of total approval yet measured for this President. Fifty-five percent (55%) disapprove. The President earns approval from 76% of Democrats while 86% of Republicans disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 38% approve and 61% disapprove. The President earns approval from 37% of men and 49% of women.

Data for these updates is collected via nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, just two-thirds of the interviews for today’s update were collected following the President’s health-care summit. Tomorrow morning (Sunday) will be the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the summit.

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, most politicians are corrupt, and neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that there is a “growing disdain for the unholy alliance between the largest corporations and our government… Some of us are ready to give up; some of us are ready to scream a little louder. But all of us believe we can do better.”

In Search of Self-Governance is available from Rasmussen Reports and at Amazon.com.

The book has received positive reviews from Dick Morris, Joe Trippi, Bill Kristol and others.

Also be sure to check out our review of last week’s key polls to see “What They Told Us.”

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