Barack Obama went on national television yesterday to insist that his jobs bill would add up to economic growth. CNS News points out that the math itself doesn’t add up:At a White House press conference on Thursday, President Barack Obama said the legislation he has proposed to create jobs could “grow the economy as much as 2 percent.” However, the White House estimates that the plan itself will cost $447 billion — or 2.97 percent of the 2011 GDP of $15.012 trillion that is currently projected by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See chart: GDP Chart from BEA.xls.)
LetÂ’s spend 3% of our GDP in order to get 2% back! That sounds like Obamanomics, all right. And it also sounds like a better deal than we got from Porkulus I, when we spent nearly 6% of our GDP in order to get, er, almost nothing back.