Morning Update

Knox County School Board petitions are available for pickup in the recently open 8th district seat.

State Rep. Frank Niceley wants Tennessee’s Congressional delegation to listen up. He has proposed some actions to get their attention:

…state legislators use their power to reapportion congressional districts to force the state’s representatives in an ‘out-of-control’ Washington to heed their wishes.

‘The state Legislature has a right to re-district (U.S. House districts) every two years, if we want to,’ he said. ‘We need to start … (showing each congressman) a picture of your (re-districted) map if you don’t pay attention.’

Sandra Clark has some notes from the Powell Republican Club last week.

Fact-Checking the State of the Union

At National Review Online, Daniel Foster offers a fact-check of President Obama’s State of the Union address:

The Economy

“I supported the last administration’s efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable. As a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we have recovered most of the money we spent on the banks.”

— While it is true that much of the money lent to banks through TARP has been repaid, very little of what was lent to AIG, the auto companies, and mortgage-stabilization programs through TARP has been recouped.

“Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. . . . And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.”

— Stephen Spruiell writes: “The bulk of the ‘tax cuts’ in the stimulus bill took the form of tax ‘rebates’ — not tax-rate cuts. . . . The difference between a tax-rate cut and a tax rebate is not insignificant in terms of economic stimulus. . . . [M]ost economists would argue that the former is highly stimulative and the latter barely so.”

— A tax-rate cut doesn’t just put money to spend back in people’s pockets. It let’s them keep a little bit more of every marginal dollar of income they earn. This strengthens incentives to work more, to produce more, to save more, and to invest more — and ultimately, all that activity powers economic growth.

— A tax rebate is just a one-time check from the government. It is the government putting money in your pocket and telling you to go out and spend it, in the hopes that this will raise “aggregate demand” and stimulate the economy.

“Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. . . . And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

— Tracking of the jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus has been beset by error and, possibly, fraud. The accounting difficulty attributed in part to the decision to change the metric from “created or saved” to the even more nebulous “funded.”

— Even as the administration began touting the “1.7 to 2.0 million” jobs created or saved by the stimulus, overall unemployment continued to rise. And what job creation there was comes at high cost. Veronique de Rugy and Jerry Brito of George Mason University report that “a total of 56,399 contracts and grants totaling $157,028,362,536 were awarded in this first quarter for which Recovery.gov reports are available. The number of jobs claimed as created or saved is 638,826.54 — an average of $245,807.51 per job.” Read more »

Hopenchange

I hope you are all having a very hopey changey Thursday!  Just to make you smile even more, here’s a wonderful video on the success of Our Dear Leader in “saving or creating” jobs in America:

Hat tip: Instapundit

Related thoughts on President Obama’s first year in office here:

Quote of the Day

From Rich Lowry at The Corner blog (National Review), on what he believes is the “crux of the matter”:

The public thinks Obama doesn’t get it; Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it.

Well put, Mr. Lowry.

About that “Spending Freeze”…

Veronique de Rugy has a good analysis of President Obama’s proposed spending freeze:

…the across-the-board freeze is so full of caveats and loopholes that it can only be seen as a joke. Here, our dieter isn’t allowed to eat desserts, unless it’s one with chocolate and whipped cream.

For instance, the freeze won’t apply to the $513 billion in unspent stimulus funds. Nor will it apply to the $247 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds or to any of the programs that cash from repaid TARP funds will pay for, such as the $30 billion to prop up community bank lending to small businesses proposed by the president during his speech.

Besides, the president might ask for a freeze, but if history is any guide, Congress won’t give it to him. The president asserted his commitment to his diet by saying that he would veto any spending bill that doesn’t meet his requirement. It will be interesting to see if he can keep this promise, especially considering how unpopular this proposal was among liberals.

In the best-case scenario, the three-year freeze over the course of ten years will save on the order of $250 billion. That amounts to only 0.58 percent of the total federal spending during that period. This seems a rather meek savings especially in light of the CBO data showing ten-year baseline deficits of $6 trillion under current laws.