Despite claims that President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan needs time to work, the White House was taken aback when the unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent.  In fact, current unemployment numbers are far above what Obama had predicted, even if the stimulus had not been passed.  While there are indications that some sectors of the economy might be recovering (consumer spending for example), President Obama cannot point to his stimulus splurge as the root cause.

Why? Well, as anything a detached centralized government does, it takes time, and nowhere is the federal government’s sloth more evident than in the stimulus spending.  Conservatives and libertarians were united in panning the stimulus because they realized the economy would likely begin its recovery by the time the stimulus funds were spent.  They were right.  After all, government cannot create new resources; it either taxes current resources and redistributes them to preferred (politically popular) segments, or borrows money it later has to repay.

For example, as of May 22, only $36.7 billion out of $787 billion has been spent on “economic recovery.”  Compare $36.7 billion to our $14 trillion economy and the stimulus represents only 0.27 percent, hardly impactful but easily wasted by political pandering and empty rhetoric.  

Under Obama’s rosy predictions earlier this year, unemployment was not supposed to exceed eight percent, far lower than this month’s numbers.  What’s more, most economists predict that U.S. Gross Domestic Product will begin to turn around in the third and fourth quarters of this year, when surplus spending is still in its infancy.

What’s Obama’s response to this new data?  This week he announced more meaningless spending, like improvements to 107 national parks.  Other gems in the stimulus designed to “grow” the economy from Washington: $2.6 million for tree thinning in Arizona, $61 million for recreation site restoration in Iowa (including picnic tables, grills, lanterns and fire rings), and an economic recovery would not be complete until the government doled out over $56,000 for playground renovations in Ohio.  At least our children won’t be bored while Washington squanders their economic inheritance through political platitudes and trillion-dollar deficits.

The tide appears to be turning, however.  It seems that the American electorate is finally beginning to sour on the President’s massive spending binge.  In addition to higher-than-expected unemployment numbers, Obama recently received a jolt to his poll numbers.

While his overall approval ratings remain high, more Americans now disapprove of his handling of federal spending and his stewardship of the federal budget, according to a recent Gallup poll.  With a budget deficit over $1 trillion, it is easy to find plenty of room for disapproval. 

Adding to the fire, a Rasmussen poll shows that voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on the economy.  At first glance this might not come as a surprise, but this is the first time in over two years that Rasmussen has found that Republicans have an advantage over Democrats on the economy. 

After eight years of GOP control, when Republicans almost doubled the federal budget and enacted the largest entitlement expansion since the Great Society, the Democratic Party had to work hard to spend all of their political capital and all of our money; Democrats have managed to succeed in both endeavors in just under six months.   

Perhaps these negative poll numbers will finally persuade the White House to consider major cuts to the federal budget, not political stunts like attempting to cut 0.003 percent from a $3.5 trillion budget.  Obama should start by abandoning plans to enact massive costly new regulation of all carbon output in the U.S., and work on real entitlement reform instead of attempting to add new entitlements to the federal ledger. 

If Obama cannot learn these early lessons about fiscal probity, perhaps losing control of Congress in 2010 will give him the clairvoyance to realize that government can never spend its way to prosperity.