Today, the Washington Post reported that "eleven weeks after Congress settled on a stimulus package that provided $135 billion to limit layoffs in state governments, many states are finding that the funds are not enougha nd are moving to lay off thousands of public employees." Washington state will be forced to layoff several thousand educators and Massachusetts which "cut 1,000 positions late last year, just announced 250 layoffs, with more likely to come soon."

Apparently missing the article's point -- that the stimulus should have included more budget stabilization funding for states -- the House GOP featured the article on their website today, suggesting that the report vindicated their unanimous opposition to the recovery act. Later in the day, they linked to the article on twitter and gleefully quipped, "Look how many layoffs the stimulus created"....

The layoffs are one early indication of how the stimulus funding could be coming up short against the economic downturn. As the stimulus plan was being drawn up, there was agreement among the White House, congressional Democrats and many economists that a key goal was to keep states from making big layoffs at a time when 700,000 Americans were losing their jobs every month.

The House passed a stimulus bill with $87 billion in extra Medicaid funding for states, as well as $79 billion in "stabilization" money to plug gaps in states' budgets for education and other areas.

But in the Senate, the stabilization funding was cut by $40 billion to secure the support of the three Republicans who were needed for a filibuster-proof 60 votes -- Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- as well as to gain the support of conservative Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The senators wanted to reduce the package to less than $800 billion, and several wanted to make room for a $70 billion patch of the alternative minimum tax.

Can you believe these people, they are claiming that Obama and the Democrat's Recovery and Reinvestment (stimulus) bill actually CAUSED layoffs.

Do these people have any brains at all or are they simply insulting the intelligence of the American people hoping that they will actually 'fall for this claim'?