What stimulus summer?

Here's a great article from the Fox Business Network

Stimulus: What a Disaster  

Sep 17, 2010 5:46 PM EDT

Life is getting harder for Americans - from close to 10% of us not having a job, to not making very much if you do.

And it's not just the last year or two... it's the last decade... or "the lost decade," according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Census Bureau shows for the first time in a generation, American income fell over a decade. In fact, between 2000 and 2009 incomes plummeted nearly 5%.

To compare, for those of us who remember the 70s, incomes rose nearly 2%; the median income for a household is now less than $50,000 a year.

Again looking back into history, income drops are nothing new.

The 80s and 90s saw big down swings in what people earned, but by the end of the decade the pendulum usually reversed itself.

Not this time.

And an even more startling number: Those Americans living below the poverty line is up more than 1% since 2008, that's more than 43.5 million Americans living in poverty!

Breaking it down further:

More than 40% young adults -many of whom had to turn back to mom and dad- are living below the line of making less than $12,000 a year!

So what to do in light of these tragic numbers?

The administration has said from Day 1: spend, spend, spend. But as I'm sure you well know,  that's not working!

The numerous stimulus bills have failed to produce the results we were promised. That money was misspent, misappropriated and  frittered away.

A report out of the LA Times today reports $111 million was spent on just 55 jobs in Los Angeles. The money went to just two agencies  who had predicted they would bring in hundreds of jobs fixing up streets, bridges, sidewalks and storm drains. Instead of fixing the problems, the bail outs and stimulus plans became pots of cash to irresistible to for politicians to use for their own purposes. And no pot of federal cash was bigger than TARP.

Take One united for example: the bank allegedly getting special treatment thanks to its connections to Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

It turns out there was a lot about this bank  Congress didn't know before shelling out $12 million to save it.

The Washington Post says the bank did not meet the eligibility requirements of TARP--in fact Waters' buddy Barney Frank had to create a new provision just for One united for it to get the funds.               

Despite the evidence piling up against them , Democrats on the hill and in the White House keep saying we need more spending, that the stimulus wasn't enough.

We can agree on one thing: the stimulus wasn't enough,  it was a disaster.