Sure.  A million and a half bucks for every job created (or saved!) is reasonable, right?

Michigan received $3.7 billion is stimulus money, of which $620 million was to be used to “create and save” jobs, while the remainder will be used by Granholm to backfill the budget deficit that she has created with her overspending so that she doesn’t have to make any substantial cuts before she leaves office. When she walks away, she will have lost more than 1,000,000 jobs in a state with a population of only 10 million. A few days ago, Granholm claimed that stimulus money “created or saved” 19,500 jobs (Enron accounting: Stimulus saved or created 19,500 jobs in Michigan). Turns out, the number is an utter fabrication, as I suspected when I wrote that prior post. Fact is, that $620 million “created or saved” 397 jobs.

Let’s just do the math. $620 million divided by say 400 jobs = $1,550,000 per job! That is an outright waste of taxpayer dollars. Worse yet, the rest of the $3.7 billion is going to keep Michigan in perpetual deficit that will be even more painful to deal with since we have had an AWOL governor for 6 1/2 years running.

I reject the notion that the government can stimulate the economy through spending.  But setting that point aside for a moment, it’s a little shocking that out of the $3.7 billion Michigan got for “stimulus” over $3 billion of it is going to prop up the state’s out-of-control spending.

How is propping up the fiscal irresponsibility of Michigan political leaders “stimulus”?  Clearly, the state government has reached an unsustainable level of spending and needs to make cuts.  But instead of doing the responsible (if painful) thing, they’ve essentially gotten a big, fat federal bailout with money borrowed from international creditors like China that will allow them to kick the can down the road a couple of miles.

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