OPINION:
Democrats, with the help of 13 House Republicans, passed a $1.2 trillion so-called infrastructure bill last week, which the Biden administration promises will lead to shovel-ready jobs come this spring.
“The president said we could see shovels in the ground in two to three months. How certain are you will have shovel-ready projects by the spring?” CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked White House Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond this Sunday on “Face the Nation.”
“We’re very optimistic, almost certain,” Mr. Richmond replied. “Remember, the president oversaw the American Rescue Plan, which we saw after the last Great Recession under the Obama administration that he oversaw, and it was very effective. He knows what he’s doing. This is his plan. We have administration expertise to get it done, so I’m very confident we can get it done.”
Mr. Obama’s $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 was “very effective?” Certainly, Mr. Richmond cannot be serious.
Mr. Obama’s plan was meant to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and keep unemployment under 8%. It accomplished none of this. Instead, total employment fell by another 4 million jobs in two years, and unemployment soared to 10%.
Mr. Biden was tasked as the “sheriff” to oversee how stimulus monies were spent. The U.S. wasted $2.6 billion in 19 “green energy” projects that collapsed, including $790 million for Abound Solar and $570 million for Solyndra.
Cree LED Light Company was also a major recipient of the 2009 stimulus funds – which in turn sent a portion of that money straight to China. A year after it was rewarded with U.S. taxpayer monies, it opened its first plant in Huizhou City, China, with its CEO boasting how more than 50% of its employees live and work in China. Mr. Biden can be credited, it seems, for creating green jobs overseas.
At the Energy Department alone, more than 100 criminal investigations were launched into squandered stimulus funds. And by 2011, it emerged that some of Mr. Obama’s biggest political donors were executives whose companies profited off of the stimulus.
Mr. Biden’s own chief of staff Ron Klain admitted in 2011 the number of jobs created from the 2009 recovery was “hardly a game-changer,” and Mr. Obama even joked at a Jobs Council, “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
In 2010, voters delivered Democrats the shellacking they deserved for such a stalled economic recovery, with Republicans picking up 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Don’t expect much from last week’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure passage. If history has taught us anything, it’s that enormous government spending overseen by Mr. Biden rips off the American taxpayer, ships jobs overseas, and is plagued with waste, fraud, and abuse.
If this is the “expertise” Mr. Richmond was referring to, the American people are in for a long three more years.
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