DEMOCRATS COOK THE BOOKS IN REPORTING ‘STIMULUS’ RESULTS

New York Times: Oregon Tops in Combined Unemployment/Underemployment

Nearly One In Four Oregonians Can’t Find Full-Time Work

“It is a startling sign of the pain that the Great Recession is inflicting, and it is largely missed by the official, oft-repeated statistics on unemployment. The national unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 percent, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. Yet it still excludes all those who have given up looking for a job and those part-time workers who want to be working full time.

“Include them — as the Labor Department does when calculating its broadest measure of the job market — and the rate reached 23.5 percent in Oregon this spring, according to a New York Times analysis of state-by-state data. It was 21.5 percent in both Michigan and Rhode Island and 20.3 percent in California.”

(Part-Time Workers Mask Unemployment Woes, The New York Times, David Leonhardt, 7/15/2009)

Full-Time Work Scarce in Democrats’ Expensive ‘Stimulus’ Plan
“How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months.

“But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.”

(SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs, The Associated Press, Ryan Kost, 7/28/2009)

Democrats Desperate to Show Results

“With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working — even if that means stretching the facts.

“At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified.”

(SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs, The Associated Press, Ryan Kost, 7/28/2009)

By Obama’s Standards, Democrat Plan Only Created 215 Jobs

“The White House requires states to report numbers in terms of full-time, yearlong jobs. That means a part-time mechanic counts as half a job. A full-time construction worker who has a three-month paving contract counts as one-fourth of a job.

“Using that method, the AP's analysis of figures in Oregon shows the program so far has created the equivalent of 215 full-time jobs that will last three months. Oregon's House speaker, Dave Hunt, called that measurement unfair, though nearly every other state that has passed a stimulus package already uses or plans to use it.”

(SPIN METER: 'Help Wanted' counting stimulus jobs, The Associated Press, Ryan Kost, 7/28/2009)

Democrat Plan Like ‘Spitting in the Ocean’

Bryan Payant, president of McCormack Construction, said the small stimulus projects are like “spitting in the ocean” of the recession. His company, which does $8 million to $10 million of business annually, won a $300,000 Pendleton office building renovation as part of the state stimulus package.

“It’s not a very large project, and the duration is only 90 days,” Payant said. “What impact it does have is short-term. Is it really helping out? It is,” Payant said. “If it weren’t, those jobs wouldn’t be there. But is it significant enough to make a difference? Not really.”

(Stimulus Adds Jobs, but Not for Long, Portland Daily Journal of Commerce, Justin Carinci, 7/24/2009)

Any Net Effect from Stimulus Will be Erased by Permanent, Job-Killing Tax Increases

“Each of the jobs, said House Minority Leader Bruce Hanna, comes with a steep price tag because the state went into debt to pay for them. He said 20 percent of the jobs went to out-of-state workers.

“What’s more, he said, thanks to tax increases on corporations and the wealthy passed this session, ‘virtually everything they’ve gained in that particular package has or will be killed. We’ll be lucky to stay even.’”

(Stimulus Package Shows Gains, The Associated Press, Ryan Kost, 6/23/2009)

Corporate Tax Increase Will Kill 43,000 Oregon Jobs Alone

“Currently, the Federal tax rate on corporate income is 35 percent, and Oregon taxes that same income at 6.6 percent. The integrated, combined rate is 39.3 percent. But the Oregon legislature just voted for HB 3405 which will, among other provisions, raise the top corporate tax rate to 7.9 percent for 2009 and 2010, for a combined rate of 40.1 percent, with slightly lower rates in subsequent years.

“This represents an increase in the rate by almost one percentage point and will put Oregon on par with Japan, which has the highest national rate in the world at 39.5 percent. Even tax-happy Sweden taxes corporations only at a 28 percent total rate.

“The effects of such an increase in corporate tax rates have been well established by comparisons of the effects of differential tax rates across countries:

• Oregon’s growth rate will slip by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per year for as long as the tax increase is in place.

• Over a ten-year period, Oregon will lose between 22,000 and 43,000 jobs, and $1.6 and $3.2 billion in personal income.”

(Raising Oregon’s Corporate Income Tax Rate Will Cost 43,000 Oregon Jobs, Randall J. Pozdena, Ph.D. , Cascade Policy Institute- Oregon Economic Opportunity Project, 6/23/2009)