Stimulus So Far: $416 million; 34 Full Time Jobs
July 13, 2009 by Patrick
Filed under State House
The New Hampshire Office of Economic Stimulus is providing estimates of the number of jobs created by President Obama’s stimulus package for the first time and the number may explain why the president’s economic agenda appears to be wounded and Americans have turned sour on the spending bill.
Is the stimulus working?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has created fifty jobs in the Granite State thus far, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. Thirty-four of those jobs are fulltime.
These jobs—many of them temporary—are the results of the first $413.6 million in stimulus funds that have come to the Granite State. The state may receive as much as $750 million in total.
NowHampshire.com has repeatedly asked the state’s “stimulus czar” Orville “Bud” Fitch for up-to-date tallies of stimulus jobs created in New Hampshire. At the end of May, Fitch did not know. On June 26th, Fitch told Nowhampshire.com, “We are just now rolling out a reporting system to gather information from grant fund recipients.”
According to stimulus backers, accountability and transparency were to be hallmarks of the historic spending measure.
The state plans to beef up the Office of Economic Stimulus using stimulus funds next week. Fitch will be replaced by a permanent director, appointed by Gov. John Lynch. The director will have a team of four employees.
Gov. Lynch set up the Office of Economic Stimulus by executive order in January of this year.
… why don’t you mention the amount of part time jobs or the amount of temporary jobs? A lot of these jobs don’t require more than part time and making them full time would be a waste of money. So why would you want them to be? Oh wait thats right you just want an excuse to bash it without doing too much work. How many of the “employed” out there are only surviving because they found that part time job? Hmmmm.. quite a lot I’d say.
The whole point of the stimulus wasn’t to create permanent jobs but to provide a temporary boost to the economy so that businesses (jobs) would survive. Buuut I’m talking to the birds I guess.
But, those 34 are only the beginning! Soon they will appoint a permanent director and add 4 employees- adding 5 more jobs!! This is awesome! And all this for only $460 million! Imagine what they will achieve if they get additional funds to a total of $750 million! I’ll bet they add another 10 jobs at least!
Nobody does it better than the federal government, you’ve got to admit!
For our federal goverment ignorance is bliss! They are soooo wrong in what they are doing to the common american. When they figure it out it will be too late. It is like throwing money in a black hole and thinking something will come back! I hope people start understanding and I think they will when 25% of the pop is out of work and banging on congress’s doors.
It is all just ridiculous. It is time, now, to just STOP all of this stimulus that has not been spent and would not hard to stop. It is not working and won’t for years and IF they must do something that works, do this: Instead, really create a NEEDED stimulus – What’s remaining of the stimulus will afford to give each U.S. taxpayer about $8,000 each. Using OUR own money, we will quickly pay some late mortgage payments, maybe a down payment on a new car from Ford, or even pay for a good used car. Maybe most of us can even splurge and load up our grocery carts. Or pay our property taxes. Won’t just the above create an economic boom and put people back to work? Won’t most of the money, in one or two changes of hand, get back to the banks (so we won’t have to bail them out with handouts) who can use this NEW money to create more moeny by giving out NEW loans, thereby building up the banking industry? After all, it is OUR money, shouldn’t any decision, then or now, start with – What could be better than giving tax payers their own money back to them? After all, WE ARE THE ECONOMY. And, after all, ‘It is the economy, Stupid.’