"(Connecticut) has surpassed the $1 billion mark for funds now committed to a number of projects and initiatives," and that, "the federal stimulus act is providing the state of Connecticut and its cities and towns with much-needed resources to help us all weather this economic downturn and get Connecticut residents back to work."
Governor Rell continued,
"My administration has been committed and engaged from the start in pursuing every federal funding source available."
Governor Rell pointed out that by last August Connecticut had received $1.2 billion Medicaid assistance, $540 million in "educational stabilization", and more than $400 million for transportation initiatives.
If Debicella had bothered to check out Governor Rell's own official website recently for an update, he would have seen that by the governor's own count, Connecticut has now received more than $4 billion in assistance from the stimulus, which has directly created more than 6,600 jobs. Rell's website lists Connecticut as receiving $840 million for health and human services, half a billion for transportation initiatives, $180 million for unemployment and job services, and nearly three quarters of a billion dollars for educational assistance.
That's the truth Debicella refuses to tell. Or, perhaps, Debicella just doesn't care about the truth.
Dan Debicella sent out a mailer. Not surprising. Dan Debicella filled his mailer with the loosest possible interpretations of fact and at least two outright lies. If you've been following Debicella's campaign for Congress so far, this should not be surprising. But even I was surprised by the scope of the distortions, and how easy they are to fact-check.
Let's start with the front. It presents the theme of the mailer (about Himes failing) and a statistic. Saying Himes failed is fine, I guess; that's what Debicella and Himes will debate. But the statistic, which is one part I classify as the "outright lie," is so easy to check, I'm amazed he expects it slip by unnoticed: "Fairfield County Unemployment 10 percent"
It's just invented. If you're gonna just make stuff up, why not 11 percent? Heck, go for 13. Because Fairfield County's unemployment rate is not 10 percent. The preliminary number for July, 2010 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- the most recent county-level stat I could find -- shows Fairfield County's unemployment rate at 8.5%. From June of 2009 to July of 2010, it varied from a low of 7.7 to a peak 9.0. How hard is it to look that up? Let me Google that for you, Dan. You'll find this handy map at a little publication called the Washington Post.
(you should really click the "Let me Google that" link in the preceding paragraph)
When I come across a bogus statistic like this, I try to find a possible source. Was some subset of Fairfield County at 10.0 percent? Was Fairfield County, South Carolina at 10 percent (they wish -- they're at 13.2)? In this case, I couldn't figure out where Debicella got this fake number. In this case, it appears to be made up. And set as the headline on his mailer. Which is an outright lie.
It doesn't get much better on the back.
Debicella trots out a variation on a favorite line of his. He enjoys going for superlative statements like: "Fairfield County got nothing," the stimulus "has done nothing to reduce unemployment," or today's gem -- Himes' economic positions have "Done Nothing More than Add Trillions to Our National Debt." All are obviously untrue. FactCheck.org featured a Debicella ad with that sort of claim and concluded "it's just false to say that the stimulus created 'no jobs' ... or 'has done nothing to reduce unemployment.'" (emphasis mine)
I'm not going to list the 274 stimulus awards completed or underway in Connecticut's 4th District. I'm tempted -- and I've commented on it before -- but I'll hold back. I think the extension of unemployment and the funding of teachers' jobs over the summer did something, no? I imagine the 25 tax cuts the Democrats in Congress enacted in 2009 alone had some effect, don't you think? Saying any policy did "nothing" is easy to disprove.
Debicella tries to back up his extreme claim that Himes has done "nothing" for the economy by listing the things he's allegedly done.
Debicella claims Himes:
Offered no help for small business
Voted for the "failed" stimulus plan (he's gonna make me bring out the 100+ Jodi Rell quotes about how great the stimulus was for CT or link to the article about the 56,00 people it kept out of poverty, isn't he?)
With the primaries behind us and Labor Day upon us, it's time to move on to the Main Event: November 2nd. On that day, voters in the seventeen towns of Connecticut's Fourth District will decide whether Jim Himes or Dan Debicella have better ideas and better represent us. A lot will depend on exactly which voters show up to vote. But those that do need to understand two things about Dan Debicella: He is one of the most partisan members of the state's legislature where he has backed some very extreme measures, and in this campaign he has offered some bizarre proposals, which are impossible to implement.
In a previous post, I critiqued (debunked? exposed?) his proposal to repeal the unspent stimulus and replace it with a tax cut. Two problems:
And the tax cut proposal, while very expensive (and deficit financed, see 1. above) has little stimulative effect and is likely to produce significantly higher long-term deficits (according to the CBO).
Does anyone else remember that the Bush administration tried a tax rebate stimulus in 2008? Checks went out in March and April of 2008. Let's see the private-sector job growth we experienced since (note: this is private-sector jobs only, since Republicans never seem to think public employees have real jobs):
Oh boy. Let's do that Bush idea again. Even the highest-ranked Republican member of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R, WI) dismisses Debicella's idea. When asked "So do Republicans have any demand-side solutions, even if they're just tax cuts? Is there talk of a payroll tax holiday, or anything similar?" he said "Temporary stuff doesn't work. These short-term stimulative things like [tax] rebates don't work." If there's a Debicella vs. Ryan debate, I will get my popcorn ready.
Now I want to go on and on about Debicella's other big idea: capping federal spending at 20% of GDP. Debicella's proposal is to "take [spending decisions] out of the politicians' hands and create a federal spending cap that would allow the federal government to be no more than 20% of GDP." He then proposes to "let it grow at inflation plus population growth." Debicella suggests that this would be a magic budget bullet because "you are not allowed to spend more... it'll force politicians of both parties, all the incumbents, to make trade-offs so they can't just pass out pork spending."
This is ridiculous on its face. I can't believe he said it. Congress would "not be allowed" to authorize a spending bill? Allowed? The critical questions and some analysis are below the fold...
(Debicela is at it again... - promoted by ctblogger)
Congressman Jim Himes' most likely opponent, Dan Debicella, has starting spending some of the money he doesn't have on TV ads. There I was on the couch, minding my own business, when my head started to hurt. The ad came on.
I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about the economics of the stimulus, and I have been keeping an eye on Dan Debicella's tendency to play loose with the facts for some time now. So when the ad opened with a flat-out made-up number, I was stunned. I shouldn't have been, I know. If Dan Debicella met an honest statement at a cocktail party, they'd require an introduction. But still, to be so bold as to be so wrong right off the bat struck even me as absurd.
Dan opens his ad with a graphic superimposed over a shot of the Capitol, showing a headline "Stimulus Spending totals $877 billion" That is jaw-droppingly wrong. The total cost of the stimulus is $787 billion (note the transposed numbers). And, critically, that is the cost, which has two elements -- spending and tax cuts. To break it down, the stimulus provides for about $275 billion in tax cuts and about $512 billion in spending. To say that "Stimulus spending totals $877 billion" is wrong. It inflates the actual spending approved by Congress by 71%.
Not only is he starting his advertising with an obvious, quantifiable lie, but in his campaign, Debicella routinely proposes "that we repeal the 80% of stimulus money that has yet to be distributed" and grant a $1500 tax credit instead. He then goes on to say how that will reduce the deficit by doing arithmetic that would cause Shelton's CMT scores to drop if he tried to pass it off as legit on a fourth-grade test.
Forgive me for making a separate post, but I wanted to take issue at length with Congressman Himes' vote against the new jobs bill (HR 2847, December 16) that Congress barely passed. His office issued this explanation (as Jonathan Kantrowitz posted):
The Congressman voted against a $75 billion Democratic spending plan which largely expanded programs in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. While the Congressman shares many of the priorities contained in the legislation, he was unwilling to authorize additional spending when over $545 billion, or more than two thirds, of Recovery Act funds are still being spent. This bill uses remaining funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to pay for this expansion. The Congressman believes that TARP funding, which was regrettably requested by President Bush, Treasury Secretary Paulsen, and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke as critical to averting financial meltdown, should not be used for anything other than debt reduction unless the money is distributed through the full appropriations process.
"As many sectors of the economy begin to show clear signs of recovery, we need to get our fiscal house in order," said Congressman Himes. "The simple facts are that we have to pay our bills, and the only long-term path to continued improvement is to replace public spending with private-sector job growth."
I have to point out that Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman takes the opposite point of view, and has for months. He has steadfastly pointed out, and I agree with him, that the initial stimulus bill was far too small. Though Congressman Himes suggests that the economy is "showing clear signs of recovery", I would suggest he focus on the nearly half a million new jobless claims that were made this week, and the double-digit unemployment rate. As Krugman has pointed out, we are in for years of subpar growth and unemployment and underemployment rates that are painfully high. Krugman put it starkly just a week ago:
I don't think many people grasp just how much job creation we need to climb out of the hole we're in. You can't just look at the eight million jobs that America has lost since the recession began, because the nation needs to keep adding jobs - more than 100,000 a month - to keep up with a growing population. And that means that we need really big job gains, month after month, if we want to see America return to anything that feels like full employment.
How big? My back of the envelope calculation says that we need to add around 18 million jobs over the next five years, or 300,000 jobs a month. This puts last week's employment report, which showed job losses of "only" 11,000 in November, in perspective. It was basically a terrible report, which was reported as good news only because we've been down so long that it looks like up to the financial press.
Unless, that is, our Democratic congress joins with Barack Obama and passes substantially greater job stimulus. Congressman Himes has taken the very disappointing position of the minority Republicans that the key economic problem is the deficit, while Krugman, whom I respect above all economists, has pointed out that the deficit is not the problem; the dismal job situation is.
In stating his opposition to a public health insurance option, Lieberman sounded familiar notes from reform's opponents, calling it a "government entitlement program" that will cost the government more money. Neither assertion is true. The public health insurance plan would be paid into, not subsidized, and as the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly stated, the plan would reduce both premiums and government costs.
Remember all the federal stimulus funds that were supposed to flow to local school districts to help offset locally-incurred school budget cuts?
Well here in Connecticut you can forget it.(subscription)
Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-CT) has set up a shell game, reducing state funding for local schools by 14% each of the next two years, and supplanting those funds with the $542 million federal education funds allocated to Connecticut through the Stabilization (SFSF) component of the Recovery Act.
Another 787,000 Americans joined the ranks of the unemployed last month, and the unemployment rate increased to 9.4%. 14.5 million Americans are unemployed, more than at any time during the Great Depression. Add the 9.1 million underemployed and the 2.2 million "discouraged" workers and there are now an astonishing 25.8 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.
The critical need to re-employ America is not yet being addressed on the scale required to meet this challenge. But there is good news. Major organizing efforts are underway to build both the grassroots movement and the broader coalition that will be needed in the coming battle for jobs and economic recovery.
[cross posted at yourct.com] Stamford Mayor and Democratic Gubernatorial front-runner Dan Malloy was invited to the White House along with about 80 municipal executives from across the country to discuss with the President implementation of the stimulus moneys just passed and signed into law.
Excerpt:
"We have urban areas -- Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven -- that are job-producing centers," Malloy said. "We need to get the money quickly."
Malloy said Obama has delivered on his pledge to work with mayors by including them in the economic recovery bill. Money is available for weatherization, community policing, schools and road repairs. But much of it will have to pass through the state first -- and that worries Malloy. "A lot depends on whether Connecticut state government can do its job and get the money in our hands. My fear is they won't," he said. Malloy ... sees a potential conflict between the governor's office and state legislature over how to disburse the stimulus funds.
"The last eight years was roughly the equivalent of 40 years in the desert," Malloy said. "This is the first time I've been back to the White House since Clinton was president." Malloy said the Bush administration would turn to the governor to see their input, but Clinton and Obama see mayors as their allies.
The corporate media has been making it seem as though spending money on essential services -- public education, food stamps, etc. -- is somehow not "stimulating," but just useless pork. These falsehoods were documented in a report by MediaMatters.org:
If there's one fact that should be made clear in every news report about the stimulus package working its way through Congress, it is this: Government spending is stimulative.
[...]
Economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, explains: "Spending that is not stimulus is like cash that is not money. Spending is stimulus, spending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple. ... Any reporter who does not understand this fact has no business reporting on the economy."
Unfortunately, many of the reporters who have shaped the stimulus debate don't seem to understand that.
ABC's Charles Gibson portrayed spending and stimulus as opposing concepts in a question to President Obama: "And as you know, there's a lot of people in the public, a lot of members of Congress who think this is pork-stuffed and that it really doesn't stimulate. A lot of people have said it's a spending bill and not a stimulus."
That formulation -- "it's a spending bill and not a stimulus" -- is complete nonsense; it's like saying, "This is a hot fudge sundae, not a dessert." But nonsensical as it is, it has also been quite common in recent news reports.
There's another problem with Gibson's formulation, though -- in describing the stimulus as a "spending bill," he ignores the fact that the bill contains tax cuts, too. Lots and lots of tax cuts. And those tax cuts, by the way, provide less stimulus than government spending on things like food stamps and extending unemployment benefits. It probably goes without saying that Gibson didn't ask if the bill would be more effective if the tax cuts were replaced by additional spending.
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, among others, has repeatedly suggested "welfare" provisions in the bill wouldn't stimulate the economy. This is the exact opposite of true; those provisions are among the most stimulative things the government can possibly do.
Lots more examples of the media's misinformation campaign at MediaMatters.org.
Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending - much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast - because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects - and effective, because it would in fact be spent [...]
My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.
The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it's clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.
Amann was among Lieberman's most vocal Democratic supporters, making appealing comments like, "Shame on all of us if we allow a shrieking minority to hijack the primary." That's how you win people over!
When some Ned Lamont supporters floated the possibility of taking on Lieberman backers in primaries of their own, Amann was just as accommodating, vowing to "crush" any challenger.
Unfortunately for him, Amann shows no signs that his comprehension has improved.
Joe Lieberman is up to his old tricks, undermining the Democratic Congress's efforts to pass an effective stimulus bill. Lieberman is supporting a version of the bill that would end up killing jobs, raising property taxes, reducing investment in green building, and cutting off vital infrastructure projects. The stimulus bill that was passed in the House is getting beaten down in the Senate, and Lieberman is carrying one of the clubs.
Just days ago CT's Congressional delegation and economic leaders championed the many benefits this bill would deliver:
Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, said Tuesday that the White House stimulus package could create up to 44,000 jobs in Connecticut, the majority of which would be in the construction and manufacturing sectors.
"The program will include the largest investment in the backbone of the American economy, our basic infrastructure --roads, transit, broadband, schools -- since the interstate highway system," Summers said in a meeting with reporters in the Old Executive Office Building.
Himes said when it comes to infrastructure, transit is the most important issue facing Norwalk and Fairfield County, but there are issues with government buildings and utilities that cannot be ignored.
"The schools are crumbling and the sewage systems are not up to snuff," Himes said in a telephone interview.
[T]he group had drafted a list of nearly $90 billion in cuts, including $40 billion in aid for states, more than $14 billion for various education programs, $4.1 billion to make federal buildings energy efficient and $1.5 billion for broadband Internet service in rural areas.
So, just when state residents were starting to feel hopeful about getting through this crisis without too much pain, Lieberman pulls the rug. It seriously makes you wonder if Lieberman enjoys watching bridges collapse and schools fall apart.
UPDATE Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are voting more consistently with Democrats on the stimulus bill than Lieberman is. See the chart. (h/t Jonk, CTBlue)
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