Find Insurance Online

The $800 billion stimulus law had as much (or more) to do with improving the education system and rail lines, installing universal broadband, and modernizing electrical grids as reducing the unemployment rate. Consequently, the best that can be said regarding the latter is that the spending played a role in keeping the rate from increasing.  A steady-state is preferable to a sinking ship. However, avoiding a worse situation is a tough thing to campaign on. As an alternative, Barak Obama could have proposed something akin to Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which was a public work relief program for unemployed men age 18-24 from 1933 to 1942. The corps was primarily geared to providing work (and a pay check) to unemployed youth. The conservation and development of natural resources in rural areas of the US was the application. The CCC was the most popular New Deal program among the general public, providing jobs for 3 million from families on relief. Had providing an on-going paycheck to those on or off unemployment compensation been Obama’s priority, the president would have sought more labor-intensive uses for the $800 billion.  That would have meant that the money would have gone to the unemployed rather than to contractors (who admittedly might have let go some of their employees). A new CCC could have operated many of our towns and cities, being implemented by the states and funded by the US Treasury.  Job retraining could have gone along with the program. In short, the $800 billion could have been more focused on the immediate problem. I am not surprised that the republicans are able to portray the stimulus spending as ineffective with respect to jobs.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/politics/09bai.html?_r=1&ref=politics