Have you heard the one about the $787 billion stimulus bill that had to be passed to keep the unemployment rate below eight percent? Turns out the bill cost an additional $75 billion (for a total of $862 billion) mostly because unemployment benefits are costing more now that the unemployment rate is at ten percent. I really wish this was a joke but unfortunately, it's the bottom line in Tuesday's cost estimate of the Recovery Act by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. (source)

Continued...

The Recovery Act also made the wrong kind of news recently when three of President Obama's top advisers appeared on three of the Sunday morning talk shows this past weekend and gave three very different numbers when discussing how many jobs the stimulus bill had created or saved. Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett said, "The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs." Over on CNN's State of the Union Political Adviser David Axelrod said it has "created more than - or saved more than 2 million jobs." And on Fox News Sunday Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the plan had "saved or created 1.5 million jobs." (source) Why such a discrepancy between the accounts of three people who should definitely know how many jobs were created or saved if, in fact, a significant number were? Those numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.

You would think these questionable results, additional $75 billion cost and the repeated rejection by voters of the Obama tax and spend agenda would give President Obama and his cronies pause. But Congressional Democrats are pressing for a second stimulus bill and the president's advisers say he will use tomorrow night's State of the Union address not to reshape his agenda, but to better explain and defend it. (source)

Translation: The Democrats will continue marching toward that cliff, tossing trillions of taxpayer dollars over before they toss their own careers to the jagged rocks below. Losing election after election hasn't changed their minds. Watching their poll numbers plummet hasn't changed their minds. Somehow they think failed policies and bad ideas will magically become successful and popular if they just explain them more. Well, the Obama machine has run out of magic, it has run out of other people's money and hopefully soon it will run out of power.