Romer Want's Even More Stimulus

Today, Christina Romer, the Obama Administration's chief economic wonk admitted that the "stimulus package" had failed. She said, that in effect, it was terrible that so many remained jobless almost a year after the bill had been passed. As the Council of Economic Advisers chief she said,

"you'll get no argument from" her on the need to improve the miserable jobs picture. Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer said it's devastating that some workers have been unemployed for two years and that job losses were continuing nearly a year after passage of the so-called stimulus bill."

Even so, with the jobless rate remaining above 10 percent in December as more than 660,000 people had left the workforce involuntarily. But Ms. Romer qualified her remarks by saying the loss of jobs from the market had "slowed".

"In the first quarter of 2009, when we first came in, we were losing on average 691,000 jobs per month. With these new numbers in the fourth quarter, we were losing 69,000 jobs," she said. "It's still terrible. We're still losing jobs, and we absolutely have to go from losing any jobs at all to adding them at a robust rate."

While Ms. Romer refused to predict what the job market would look like this fall prior to the mid-term election, she did say it was "still a very realistic estimate that job growth could begin in the spring."

Ms. Romer also seemed to back a Democratic Party effort to spend an additional $75 billion outside of normal spending with an additional "stimulus package," though this time it would be spent in programs like COBRA and for those who are attempting to weatherize their homes "cash for caulkers" -- energy saving retrofits.

"The sense that we need to do more is overwhelming," she said.

Though she didn't specify how the government would pay for it all...more bond sales, most likely. That would add another almost $100 billion to this years record deficit, which is on mark to reach $1,800,000,000,000.00. Just what we need.