Scott Brown Says Stimulus Hasn’t Created One New Job — WH Says He’s Wrong
EmailABC News' Jonathan Karl reports: Minutes after he was sworn in by Vice President Biden, newly minted Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) says the stimulus “hasn’t created one new job.” The comments came at Brown’s first press conference as a U.S. Senator when I asked him if he is willing to work with Democrats on a jobs bill. Based on his response, that seems unlikely.”The last stimulus bill didn’t create one new job and in some states the money that was actually released hasn’t even been used yet,” Brown said. ”It didn’t create one new job?” I asked.”That’s correct. We lost another 85,000 jobs again, give or take last month,” he responded. ”And in Massachusetts, it hasn’t created one new job and throughout the country as well. It may have retained some but it hasn’t created any new jobs. I need to see the bill.”Brown’s comments are at odds with the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office, which says the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka “stimulus”, saved or created 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs in the third quarter of 2009. The White House’s Recovery Act website, recovery.gov, says stimulus grant recipients reported creating 9,261 jobs in Massachusetts during the fourth quarter of 2009.The Obama Administration says Brown’s got his facts wrong.”Economists of all political points of view, including those from the non-partisan CBO, estimate that the Recovery Act has created or saved between 1.5 – 2.4 million jobs across America,” said Jay Carney, spokesman for Vice President Joe Biden, the administration’s top Recovery Act booster and watchdog. ”Unemployment is far too high, which is why the President is so focused on jobs. But it is beyond dispute that if it were not for the Recovery Act, as many as 2.4 million more Americans would be unemployed today.”More Carney: ”Anyone can go to Recovery.gov and see that MA state and local government, businesses and community organizations have already reported directly funding over 9,000 jobs in the state last year – and that’s based on a only a portion of the total $8.4 billion in Recovery funds that have already gone to MA.”Shortly before the press conference, Brown had enjoyed a little small talk with Biden about basketball.They did not, unfortunately, did not get a chance to discuss the stimulus.”I had always wanted to meet him,” Brown said of Biden shortly after the swearing-in ceremony.
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RAMBO COMES TO WASHINGTON? He needs facts, before doing substantive news conferences. Democrats do the people business, this pretty boy is there to do more obstruction. With this assessment, you know where he stands, so don’t expect anything but the same from “him and them”!
Posted by: sara | February 4, 2010, 7:27 pm 7:27 pm
He’s wrong. It has created jobs where I live. We’re getting a (much needed) new, larger hospital. It’s bringing new doctors and specialists to the area. And it’s a fact that the stimulus has created some jobs and saved jobs also. Maybe he should try thinking before he speaks. He may be talking about Mass. But not only will his decisions affect those living in Mass, they’ll affect the rest of us too. Maybe he shouldn’t be so one sided. The rest of the country is paying his salary too.
Posted by: Bea | February 4, 2010, 8:07 pm 8:07 pm
Scott Brown is right, what jobs? 480,000 were reported lost this month alone. I am sure SEIU had something to do with the larger hospital. That is the problem, special interests are being catered to at the expense of small businesses and non union jobs. The largest growth in jobs is in the Federal government. Workers for the state or government dependency for work is creepy in my opinion, being a slave to big government is oppression. What the governemnt giveth it can also take away. If the only work is government work we will have lost freedom, fredom of choice. Now Google is talking with the with the government for more intrusion on individual privacy rights, big brother is here .
Posted by: Downwithsocialism | February 4, 2010, 8:41 pm 8:41 pm
It has been reported that few, if any republicans were in attendance when Brown made his ridiculous remarks.
Posted by: boo | February 4, 2010, 9:09 pm 9:09 pm
Thank God for Scott Brown and the people of Massachusetts!
We certainly don’t need the Louisiana purchase, the Nebraska cornhusker deal or the big payoff to unions.
Posted by: PROUD AMERICAN | February 4, 2010, 10:16 pm 10:16 pm
The stimulus created 3 new jobs:
Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA)
Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ)
Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)
Thank God!
Posted by: Lesley | February 4, 2010, 10:24 pm 10:24 pm
I don’t see anything in the article to refute Brown’s claim. Everytime it’s brought up, the phrase “saved OR created” is used. Well, which is it? Brown was talking about jobs that were created. Not “saved or created”. Can the WH just point to a job that was created, rather than continuously using the very ambiguous disjunction “saved or created”?
Posted by: Johnny | February 4, 2010, 11:11 pm 11:11 pm
Senator Brown is talking about real jobs.
Government jobs are not real jobs and they produce nothing of value; they just consume.
Real jobs are created by people building their own businesses and that will not start again until government barriers are removed and the economic climate becomes one of certainty.
Obama and his top-down government policies define uncertainty and economic decline.
Posted by: Mike Constitution | February 4, 2010, 11:17 pm 11:17 pm
Driving home tonight, I saw a new local policeman, hired with stimulus money. Later I passed a new mass transit bus, it’s driver, also paid for with stimulus money. Sen. Brown appears to suffer from Palin Unreality Syndrome.
Syimptoms manifest themselves by “just making stuff up”. The Repub base doewsn’t care.
Posted by: B.Bear | February 4, 2010, 11:42 pm 11:42 pm
It is hard to imagine what real jobs have been created, but this is the image I have in mind. A bit of history here; I worked in Algeria years ago, where it was obviously clear to me that nationalized institutions’ (in this case the national oil company) main job is to keep the government in power as opposed to actually accomplish that the company is supposed to be doing (in this case finding and producing oil). The parking lot needed to be cleared of sand, so instead of having the one dude that cleans parking lots with a sweeping machine at 2am, they hire 15 people to push brooms and shovels all day long. Of course they need to feed these people breakfast lunch and dinner and then hire 15 more so that these people can have days off since they work 2 weeks on 2 weeks off. This is the kind of jobs that government stimulus provides. However on paper 29 jobs have been created.
Posted by: LibertinTexas | February 4, 2010, 11:51 pm 11:51 pm
Hmmm. Something is amiss? From Feb through the 3rd quarter of 2009, $112 billion of the $787 billion ‘stimulus’ had been spent. $88 billion in the form of a tax cut amounting to 12 dollars a week larger paychecks.
The total economy for the third quarter of 2009 was about $3,500 billion. On the whole the economy lost more jobs than it created. So,… $112 billion stimulus created 1.6 million jobs but the rest of the economy, 35 times the stimulus, lost 2 million jobs?
Posted by: MikeS | February 5, 2010, 12:19 am 12:19 am
Wow newest Senator is right on this one! Just saw article some stimulus money being used to fly teachers to a LA convention. Only $400K, Senator is right its wasted money by people they dont know how to the market works. We will have the debt however to remember the expenditure by.
Posted by: BullingtonB | February 5, 2010, 1:10 am 1:10 am
ok – all you who are negative on the stimulus – what would have happened if there was no stimulus?
Posted by: Bob | February 5, 2010, 8:47 am 8:47 am
Mr. Brown is not correct. There has been a few dozen new jobs from the stimulus bill. Compared to the millions lost, that is hardly noticeable, of course.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | February 5, 2010, 9:20 am 9:20 am
Scott Brown and Mass whine about stimulus money. Fine, let them return the money for use in another state that would love to have the money. Didn’t hear Brown complain about the federal billions that went into the big dig. In fact there is likely video of him at the ribbon cutting ceremony claiming credit for the federal funds. Two years and you are gone with idiotic comments like that on your first day in office.
Posted by: Ira | February 5, 2010, 11:31 am 11:31 am
Incidentally Rick I will rely on the nonpartisan office of OMB for govt statistics not partisan comments like your’s (few dozen).
Posted by: Ira | February 5, 2010, 11:34 am 11:34 am
That’s an odd headline. This isn’t a matter of “Brown said this, the White House said that…”
.
All sides of the debate over the stimulus have cited the CBO as the best authority on what’s happened, and the CBO clearly shows that Scott Brown is completely wrong.
Posted by: TR | February 5, 2010, 11:36 am 11:36 am
“Government jobs are not real jobs and they produce nothing of value; they just consume.”
My brother’s a policeman who kept his job because of the stimulus. If I give you his address, would you drive over there and say this to his face?
Posted by: Brian R. | February 5, 2010, 11:38 am 11:38 am
incidentally 1/3 of the stimulus went to shore up state governments. Another 1/3 went to middle class tax cuts, extension of unemployment benefits and assistance with COBRA. Only a portion for public works projects like high speed rail in Fla.
R answers to help the economy, zero. Where in the world would the unemployment rate be w/o the stimulus, certainly not 9.7%
Posted by: Ira | February 5, 2010, 11:39 am 11:39 am
Thank God for Scott Brown and the people of Massachusetts! We certainly don’t need the Louisiana purchase, the Nebraska cornhusker deal or the big payoff to unions.
.
No, you just need Sen. Richard Shelby (Republican of Alabama) putting a hold on every single bit of business in the Senate unless he gets his billions of dollars in earmarks approved.
.
Republicans are much better at this. Nelson and Landrieu just got millions for their states. Shelby is holding everyone hostage for BILLIONS.
Posted by: Marc | February 5, 2010, 11:41 am 11:41 am
meanwhile Shelby opposes Consumer Protection Agency in Banking Committee.
Posted by: Ira | February 5, 2010, 12:21 pm 12:21 pm
Mike Constitution;
“Government jobs are not real jobs”…ah, yeah, right [snickering quietly]. But I think what you actually think is that the new jobs created by the stimulus are on the Fed/State/local payroll. How silly is that. Most of my neighborhood is people in the construction industry, small business employees, laid off for weeks until stimulus monies funded public work projects like building rail stations and other infrastructure.
Don’t be a Brown, think before you spout nonsense!
Posted by: Les Ismore | February 5, 2010, 1:50 pm 1:50 pm
Brown’s comments are at odds with the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office, which says the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka “stimulus”, saved or created 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs in the third quarter of 2009. The White House’s Recovery Act website, recovery.gov, says stimulus grant recipients reported creating 9,261 jobs in Massachusetts during the fourth quarter of 2009.
Brown is Correct and as usual the
Obama Administration is Lying!
The CBO included the unprovable
“jobs saved” term that Obama and
his incompetents created.
How do you know if your job was saved
by the Stimulus Bill?
If you still have your job tomorrow
did Obama and Co save it?
Even if you say that the Stimulus Bill
allowed state governments to avoid
laying off police, firemen etc the
number would not be close to
the 600,000-1,600,000 figure cited.
Scott Brown is right and unfortunately
the CBO has joined the Obama
spin machine.
Posted by: reaganfan | February 6, 2010, 1:00 pm 1:00 pm