Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn on Monday marked the five-year anniversary of President Obama’s economic stimulus, but it was hardly a laudatory toast to the 2009 bid to restart America’s infrastructure and workforce.
Mr. Cornyn, Texas Republican, said promises of “shovel-ready” jobs from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were supposed to “get our economy moving.”
“Five years later, our economy is still sluggish, Americans are dropping out of the workforce by the thousands, and the President’s latest big government experiment, Obamacare, is now on track to slash 2 million more jobs from the workforce,” he said.
Mr. Cornyn was referring to a recent Congressional Budget Office report that said the health care law would not cut jobs, per se, but could dissuade more than 2 million people to stop working or work less because they did not need to rely on employer-based health insurance.
Summing up, the senator said the stimulus’ legacy has been one of “more debt, fewer jobs, and less opportunity for growth.”
“We have reached a point where reining in the government is our only chance for a fiscally stable future, and it’s time to come together to enact sensible reforms that restrain Washington’s runaway spending,” he said.
Mr. Cornyn’s Texas colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, went on Twitter to take a swipe at Mr. Obama’s stimulus.
“Well, five years in, it looks like President Obama’s stimulus did actually create jobs,” Mr. Cruz tweeted. “Unfortunately, they’re all at the IRS and NSA.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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