Candidate Barack Obama regularly flipped positions for political gain, perhaps learning an unfortunate lesson that flip-flopping has no costs. However, as taxpayers are learning, President Obama’s broken promises have very real costs.
As the president took office, his advisers released an analysis that promised his stimulus bill would prevent the unemployment rate from rising over 8 percent. Obviously it has not. For example, in October 2009 the rate was 10.0 percent, 2.1 percent above the rate promised by the president. That 2.1 percent translates into 3.3 million more workers out of work that month than the president promised. Using the average hourly earnings in that month, the lost jobs in November translated to $11.2 billion in lost wages in one month alone.
Obama’s failed promise to reduce the deficit totals: $1,090,700,000,000
For that amount of money we could pay for:
- 88,33,170 Americans to go to college
- 6,562,575 homes
- 294 billion gallons of gas
Obama’s failed promise to keep unemployment below 8% with the stimulus totaled: $423,000,000,000 in lost wages
For that amount of money we could pay for
- 34,257,753 Americans to go to college
- 2,545,126 homes
- 114 billion gallons of gas
Read more at American Action Forum.