FNC's Kelly: What Happened to Eased Unemployment Promised with Obama Stimulus?

Earlier this year, proponents of the $787-billion stimulus bill opposed by most Republicans in Congress argued it was the only way to keep unemployment from exceeding double-digits and then some.

However, as Megyn Kelly, fill-in host for Fox News May 25 “On the Record with Greta van Sustren” explained, that isn’t what has happened, despite money being used for highway signs around the United States boasting about stimulus money being used.

“Well it has been three months since President Obama signed the stimulus package into law, but is there any evidence that the $780-billion bill is actually helping Americans?” Kelly asked. “Stimulus projects going into effect around the country – signs like these mark road and highway projects around the nation that had been paid for with your tax dollars, and yet unemployment continues up to 8.9 percent in April and it was 8.5 percent in March. So what is going on?”

Obama remarked on Jan. 24 [1] that “if we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.” Kelly cited a report from his economic advisers [2] warning that without the stimulus, unemployment would hit around 8.5 percent by April 2009, and 7.8 percent with it. But so far, it has done that anyway.

“He told us that with the stimulus that we would, in April at around a 7.8 percent unemployment rate, around 7.8,” Kelly said. “And that without the stimulus, it would be 8.5 percent. It’s already at 8.9 percent, so it’s higher than he predicted it would be if we had no stimulus at all.”

As Wall Street Journal editorial board member and senior economics writer Stephen Moore explained to “On the Record,” this is proof Keynesian-style economic policy doesn’t work.

“Well, it tells me Megyn that this, what I call the Argentina strategy of economic recovery of borrow and borrow and borrow and then borrow some more hasn’t worked very well,” Moore said. “We have lost – we have been averaging about 500,000 new lost jobs every month now for the last four or five months, so it is a dismal record.”

Moore also pointed out just how much the government is spending – $1 billion an hour.

“The problem is that the borrowing isn’t causing the economic growth that we hoped for Megyn,” Moore said. “We’ve been spending and borrowing a billion dollars an hour. The hour that you’re going to be on TV tonight – we’ll borrow another billion dollars at the federal level. These numbers are so huge, about $30,000 of borrowing per family in America. And you know what, when you borrow like that – and then you tax and you spend, you just don’t get a robust recovery.”

Throughout the stimulus debate, the media neglected to point out [3] just how much $787 billion meant to the taxpayer. However, the media has done little to hold President Barack Obama accountable for not being able to meet the statements he put forth pertaining to how much the stimulus would thwart higher unemployment.