For First Time, Plurality Of Americans Think Stimulus Hurt The Economy

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s the picture:

For what it’s worth, the $787 billion stimulus which Americans are increasingly agreeing was a dismal failure was in reality a $3.27 trillion porkulus package.  Which is to say, this was a FAR bigger and a FAR more dangerous waste of money which will do FAR more harm to our economic futures than most Americans understand.

Here’s what Rasmussen said under the title, “For First Time, Plurality Believes Stimulus Plan Hurt The Economy“:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.

The number who believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy rose from 28% in September, to 31% in October, and 34% in November before jumping to 38% this month. The week after the president signed the bill, 34% said it would help the economy, while 32% said it would hurt.

The Political Class has a much different view than the rest of the county. Ninety percent (90%) of the Political Class believes the stimulus plan helped the economy and not a single Political Class respondent says it has hurt. (See more on the Political Class).

The underlying reason for skepticism about the stimulus plan is that 50% of voters believe increasing government spending is bad for the economy. Just 28% believe that increased government spending helps the economy.

Men, by a 42% to 27% margin, believe the stimulus effort has hurt the economy. Women are evenly divided.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats believe the stimulus plan has helped the economy while 47% of Republicans believe it has hurt. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 52% believe the stimulus plan has had a negative impact.

Concerns about federal budget deficits also play a role in evaluating the stimulus spending. Voters continue to think that the president’s top budget priority should be cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term in office. But they see it as the goal the president is least likely to achieve.

Health care reform is second on the list of priorities for voters, but most oppose the health care plan working its way through Congress.

Not surprisingly, most Americans are opposed to a second stimulus plan. In fact, 51% of voters say more jobs would be created if the remaining ending planned in the first stimulus plan was cancelled right away.

Only 14% of American workers say their firms are hiring and 29% say their employers are laying people off. As a result, 67% expect that unemployment will be at 10% or higher a year from now.

Please allow me to supplement the above Rasmussen article describing the fact that a solid plurality of Americans now believe the stimulus was harmful with another article detailing what a whopping load of partisan corruption the stimulus has turned out to be:

Report: Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
December 16, 2009

A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.

“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. “But we don’t find any correlation.”

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia is one of the nation’s most respected economic and regulatory think tanks and has a Nobel prize-winning economist on staff. The econometric analysis was done using data provided by Recovery.gov — the government website devoted to tracking the stimulus data — as well as a host of other government databases.

Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans. “We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.

The Mercatus Center analysis also found that Democratic congressional districts received on average almost double the funding of Republican congressional districts. Republican congressional districts received on average $232 million in stimulus funds while Democratic districts received $439 million on average.

“We found that there is a correlation [relating to the partisanship of congressional districts],” de Rugy said. Her regression analysis found that stimulus funds are expected to decrease by 24.19 percent if a district is represented by a Republican.

“During the appropriations process, you’re not surprised to see the Democrats are getting more money, but in this case a lot of the money we’re looking at is going through HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development], or Department of Education, Department of Transportation etc. and they’re following a formula,” she said. “But the correlation exists, and not only does it exist — when you look at how much money we’re talking about, it’s a pretty big deal.”

The analysis found that neither congressional leadership positions of local members nor presidential preference in 2008 were factors in stimulus allocation by congressional district.

Finally, the Mercatus analysis shows that a majority of the funds allocated went to public rather than private entities — nearly $88 billion to $69 billion. While some of the money given to public entities may eventually filter down to the private sector, it’s much less transparent how money given to public entities is spurring economic growth and job creation.

So, to repeat, the stimulus money isn’t being given out to low-income Americans or struggling geographic regions.  It is being given out to Democrats to use as political slush funds.

The Democrat Party is the party of corruption, partisanship, socialism, and big-government-as-God-substitute ideology.

And more and more Americans are coming to realize how dangerous they are to the American way of life.

Another way to look at this is that – from the very beginning of the Obama administration – the Republican Party has demonstrated that they were completely right and Democrats were completely wrong.  Whether you look at the stimulus, cap-and-trade, garbage climate change claims, health care, or terrorism, Americans now solidly agree that Republicans were right; Democrats were wrong.