Biden and Unemployment: Meet the Press, June 14

Joe Biden was on Meet the Press this morning, trying to explain why the Obama administration screwed up so royally on the economy and the stimulus package.



Transcript

MR. GREGORY: Right. But the, but this package was sold on the premise that it would in fact keep unemployment at 8 percent. It's exceeded that...

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MR. GREGORY: ...with the recovery plan.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: It wasn't sold on that. It was sold on it would create...

MR. GREGORY: That's what the report said, Mr. Vice President.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: ...or--no, it said it would--what would happen was it would save or create jobs. It's doing that. It is doing that. Everyone guessed wrong, at the time the estimate was made, about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed. Now, we're going to recalibrate this in terms of what we've inherited, what in fact is going on out there. But look, the bottom line is that jobs are being created that would not have been there before. All you've got to do is go into New York City. There's 14,000 teachers working who got their, got their notices. Go with me up to New Flyer bus company up in Minnesota, come--I mean, there--it's--throughout the country, it's creating jobs.

MR. GREGORY: Regardless, though, the economy is worse off with or without this stimulus plan that this administration expected.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: The economy was worse off when we made the assessment than anyone thought it was. The economy is actually getting better, things are getting better. We have a long, long way to go. But now you see what's happening. We're having a, a situation where housing is starting to improve, where lending is starting to come forward, where we have a situation where we've gained some control of the automobile companies who otherwise would have had to been liquidated in terms of them staying in business and having a prospect of growing. So I think if you ask out there, look--and look at what the, you know, these measures of confidence in the economy are. Everyone feels mildly better about where the economy's going.

MR. GREGORY: One more point about the stimulus, and that is you said when this thing was being debated, most of it would get out the door right away, $800 billion. And yet just this week there were reports about the fact that only 6 percent of that money has been spent so far.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, I don't know who said...

MR. GREGORY: Where are the projects?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: ...we're going to get $800 billion out the door in 100 days. We have over 2,000 projects approved. We have now a situation where you have people--you're going to see in the next--and let me--this is an important point. You let a contractor build a highway. It's $42 million, like I was just--did one in the state of Kansas, $42 million dollars. Now what's happened? The governor, the governor gets that approval. What's he doing? Puts it out to bid, competitive bid. It took somewhere between a month and three months to get those bids back. Now the spades are in the ground. Now it's working. That's why we're confidently going to predict that we will increase fourfold what went--and now $150 billion--$140 billion has been obligated now. But obligation requires, then, the states to go forward and get the contracting done according to the rules that they have within the state for competitive bidding.

I give some credit to David Gregory for even posing these questions to Biden. It's so unlike anyone in the lib media, especially those at NBC and MSNBC, to note the Obama administration's failures.

When Biden says, "Everyone guessed wrong, at the time the estimate was made, about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed," I hear echoes of the past administration and the way they slammed President Bush for faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Apparently, Obama and Biden, overseer of the stimulus, and their Dem cohorts had faulty economic intelligence.

And EVERYONE did not guess wrong.

No Republicans in the House and only three Republicans in the Senate voted for that bloated, useless stimulus package, and one of them, Arlen Specter, later switched parties.

The stimulus package is the Dems' baby and it hasn't helped the economy.

One day Obama will say we've turned the corner. The economy is improving. Then he'll say that many more painful, difficult days lie ahead.

It's ridiculous.

That fact is Obama and the Democrats did not deliver. The stimulus was snake oil. The Republicans didn't buy it.

Biden tries to use the tired, old excuse of what they "inherited."

Obama and the Dems did not inherit the stimulus. They created it. Their strategy has failed.

Remember the stimulus was sold as an emergency tactic to jump-start the economy.

(Oh, yes, it was an EMERGENCY. That was used as justification for not posting the bill online 48 hours before the vote.)

Obama wrote in his February 5, 2009, op-ed piece in the Washington Post that the stimulus was necessary to prevent disaster.

Obama warned of dire consequences if the stimulus did NOT pass.

"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

Obama and the Dems rammed the emergency stimulus package through and it didn't do what Obama promised.

It makes you wonder about this same crowd ramming through health care reform, doesn't it?