What's Stimulus Doing?

I just went out to the recovery.gov website where all of the economic Stimulus Funding is tracked. They have a nifty page that allows you to see the dollars of contracts, grants, and loans for specific areas in the country. I put in the zip code for downtown Bakersfield, where I live and was surprised to see how that money is working. Here's the breakdown as of February 10th, 2010:

$23,561,960 in Contracts which created 1.21 jobs.
$103,984,148 in Grants which created 60.36 jobs.
$0 in Loans which created 0 jobs.

$127,546,108 in Total which created 61.57 jobs.

I'm not an economist but that's roughly two million dollars for each job created. This is money that's never going back to the government. Notice there was zero dollars in loans.

If the government truly wished to create jobs, why are the funds going out to so many grants? Why are there so few jobs created for our tax investment? The twenty-three million in contracts obviously went to companies that were already fully staffed. Twenty-three million dollars just became a net loss in terms of job creation. The one-hundred three million went for grants which are only temporary employment for those employees. If more grants do not come later, those jobs/programs will go away.

This approach is counter-intuitive. We have a jobs problem. We have a deficit/debt problem. Why isn't this money invested where more jobs can be created which will ultimately result in more tax income to the state and federal governments?

Let's define a small business as one that's been in business for at least five years and employs more than ten employees. Let's select the top sixty of these companies determined by earnings before interest & tax. Let's now award each of these companies two million dollars for expansion and growth. How many employees do you think that each of these companies would hire?

If the economic recovery was the so important why has only one-third of the stimulus money been spent? Where has that money gone to? How many small businesses have you heard of that received stimulus funds? I know of the banks and some very large companies. This tells me that the Democrats are not quite so big on helping the middle and low income earners in the country as they purport to. Take a look at all the new taxes rolling out at the state and, soon to be, federal level. These new taxes on products and services hit the lower and middle classes in this country the hardest. Without the jobs the tax base dwindles. The smaller tax base causes a demand for creative new taxes to recover loss tax revenue.

Do you see what's really happening? Those without jobs get benefits extended to them. Those with jobs get taxed more. Those without jobs are still taxed every time they consume a product or service. If a more jobs were created there would be less expense in benefit payouts and more wage earners as a tax base. If this isn't happening then what is? Now that's a good question.

I would encourage you to visit the recovery.org site and look for yourself how the money is affecting your area. See if it's anything like my area.