Douglas Turner: Obama’s stimulus plan isn’t helping New York
WASHINGTON — Failure is a little too strong a term to stencil on President Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” package at its six-month mark. In New York State so far, a better word is unsuccessful.
Blame in part the sluggishness of Gov. David Paterson’s administration in getting the money to the bulldozers. The larger problem is the program’s design: It is not really a stimulus package. It was never meant to be for economic growth at all.
It is shaped to mollify old folks with token amounts of Social Security money, offer employed middle-income Americans small tax breaks and ladle money to states and localities for growing welfare, unemployment insurance and health care costs.
Politically, the program may inspire the Democratic base — hospital worker and public employee unions — to support party candidates in next year’s midterm elections for the House and Senate.
But so far in New York, the key number for the stimulus program is 23,900. That’s the number of construction workers who have lost their jobs since last year.
The ruling Democrats seem to have turned their backs on the idea that well-conceived government public works create private sector jobs and future prosperity. The concept dates from Gov. De-Witt Clinton, who built the Erie Canal. Clinton was a reformer and not a hack.
Today’s Democratic politicians weekly announce the “stimulus” is repaving a stretch of a local arterial, or doing curb replacement or they showcase big plans for some new bus depot. The reality is that the governor has actually released only a pittance of money for construction statewide: $16,699,628.
Reports by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli say that’s all that has been actually paid to contractors and workers out of the $702 million in “stimulus” construction money allocated to New York in the bill rushed through Congress last winter.
DiNapoli’s “Open Book New York” reveals that only 21 percent of the $17.4 billion state share of the national stimulus outlay is destined for transportation improvements anyway. The biggest quick payment was not to build anything. It was for state and local Medicaid expenses: $3.4 billion.
This largess lowers the pressure for state and local payroll cuts, and keeps the hospital administrators and unions happy. The governor has already released $1.571 billion for unemployment insurance payments. There is money allocated to hire young people to clean up parks, but not a dime has been spent for that.
Knowing New York as we do, who would be surprised that our governor is using unspent federal stimulus allocations to pave over fiscal potholes somewhere else. For example, stimulus provides the state with $41 million for “public protection.” Only $5,000 of that has been spent.
Without people like DiNapoli, the public may never know where the money actually lands. A senior Republican researcher told this column they do not have the capability to accurately track it comprehensively on a national basis.
For that, the people must depend on Obama, who to some is looking more and more like an illusionist.
The economy is no mirage to those in Erie County who are among the 8.3 percent unemployed, or the millions around the nation who have lost jobs that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,said “are not coming back.”
There’s no talk from Obama about restoring the millions of our manufacturing jobs lost to China. That issue is apparently too big even for this president’s sleight-of-hand. So we have to settle for the stimulation of only $2 billion the federal government has actually spent as of mid-August on infrastructure, nationally.
By the way, only $81 billion — about 10 percent of the entire stimulus authorization—has been spent as of a few days ago. So where is this $1.3 trillion federal deficit coming from?
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