Doubts About Effectiveness of NW Stimulus $

By Evan at July 29th, 2009.

The writing for workers in Oregon is on the wall: jobs are becoming scarcer as pink slips increase. The state is currently experiencing 12.4 percent unemployment. That’s nearly 3 points higher than the national average.

Perhaps that explains why spin from some Oregon Democrats on supposed “job creation” as a result of a supplemental state stimulus project caught the eye of the Associated Press today:

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.

The story goes on to question how jobs “created or saved” by the President’s stimulus package are being counted:

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.

While Vice President Joe Biden tried to turn the tables back on critics today by saying the Administration has only had 4 months to act, there seems to be wide and growing anxiety that stimulus spending is beginning to be viewed by the public as ineffective, if not wasteful.

The slow pace of the spending is also problematic in keeping a key promise made by the President: stimulus spending would be distributed quickly.

In other Northwest stimulus news, the AP also reported today that Seattle is one of 4 major cities that will NOT receive funding from $1 billion earmarked in the bill for keeping local law enforcement on the job. That, on the heels of a strange reversal of fortune for the state’s ferry system earlier this month.

UPDATE: Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire told the Seattle Times, she has lobbied President Obama to consider more state stimulus aid as soon as 2011.

Tags: Associated Press, Barack Obama, Chris Gregoire, featured, Oregon, Oregon stimulus jobs, Stimulus, Washington