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Washington, Nov 2 - By Iowa Congressman Tom Latham
Iowa’s 4th Congressional District

More than eight months after its enactment, the effects of the economic stimulus bill have failed to even approach the lofty promises made by the bill’s supporters while it was being rushed through Congress by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership.  In the debate leading up to the final vote on the stimulus, I urged my colleagues to take a step back and put the $787 billion proposal under the microscope.  I cautioned that forcing through such massive spending with so little accountability would expose American taxpayers to government waste and unwieldy bureaucracy. It’s now evident that those predictions have come true.

Recovery.gov, the White House’s online guide to stimulus package spending, has a handy feature that allows visitors to the site to track stimulus spending and job creation broken down by congressional district.  Here’s a link to the tracking feature.  

According to the site, Iowa’s 4th Congressional District has received about $500 million in stimulus spending, which has led to the creation of 1,389.27 jobs.  For those keeping score, that’s a cost to taxpayers of about $358,566 per job.  In an official February 2009 document, the White House claimed that Iowa’s 4th District would gain 6,700 jobs as a result of the stimulus.  Eight months after the bill was signed into law, the stimulus has generated just a fraction of that number and unemployment remains a serious concern.

Iowa has received a total of about $1.5 billion in stimulus funds to create 5,336.12 jobs, according to Recovery.gov. That averages out to about $283,130 per job. White House predictions from February claimed the stimulus would create 37,000 jobs in Iowa.

But even those numbers are now in question after the Associated Press reported last week that a government report on stimulus spending overstated the number of jobs created by the legislation by several thousand.  The article states that an initial government tally claimed that stimulus money has paid for more than 30,000 positions, but that number exceeds the true number of jobs by at least 5,000.

This was a $787 billion spending bill that was rushed through Congress on the claim that failure to act immediately would doom our economy.  Supporters claimed that enactment of the stimulus would stop unemployment from topping 8 percent.  Today, the national unemployment rate is near 10 percent.  Americans are asking where the jobs are, and it has become abundantly clear that the stimulus bill is not the answer.