{"id":659,"date":"2010-02-24T03:22:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=659"},"modified":"2010-02-24T03:22:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:22:00","slug":"about-that-useless-stimulus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/24\/about-that-useless-stimulus\/","title":{"rendered":"About that Useless Stimulus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The nonpartisan CBO has finally weighed in.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in; font-family: calibri; font-size: 11pt\"><font color=\"#000000\"><a href=\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202010\/J-M\/AboutthatUselessStimulus_25FF\/ARRA.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px\" title=\"ARRA\" border=\"0\" alt=\"ARRA\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202010\/J-M\/AboutthatUselessStimulus_25FF\/ARRA_thumb.jpg\" width=\"183\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a> For months, conservatives have been claiming that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, i.e. the stimulus) is a \u201cboondoggle\u201d that \u201cfailed\u201d and did not create \u201cone new job.\u201d But last week, the New York Times\u2019 David Leonhardt noted that economic research firms estimate that ARRA created or saved<\/font> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/17\/business\/economy\/17leonhardt.html\" target=\"_blank\">1.6 to 1.8 million jobs<\/a><font color=\"#000000\">. And today, the non-partisan Congressional Research Office placed the estimate even higher, saying that ARRA is responsible for<\/font> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/ftpdocs\/110xx\/doc11044\/02-23-ARRA.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">up to 2.1 million jobs<\/a> <font color=\"#000000\">in the 4th quarter of last year:<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: calibri; font-size: 11pt\"><font color=\"#000000\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">CBO estimates that in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2009, ARRA added between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States<\/span>, and it increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by between 1.4 million and 3.0 million\u2026CBO also estimates that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.5 percent to 3.5 percent higher in the fourth quarter than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in; font-family: calibri; font-size: 11pt\"><font color=\"#000000\">CBO calculated that without the stimulus package, the unemployment rate would be up to<\/font> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/ftpdocs\/110xx\/doc11044\/02-23-ARRA.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">1.1 percent higher<\/a><font color=\"#000000\">. It also said that unemployment is higher than analysts predicted after passage of the ARRA due to \u201cgreater-than-projected weakness in the underlying economy<\/font> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/ftpdocs\/110xx\/doc11044\/02-23-ARRA.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">rather than lower-than-expected effects<\/a> <font color=\"#000000\">of ARRA.\u201d&#160; [<em>emphasis original<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2010\/02\/23\/cbo-jobs-report\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Now we can prove it it from multiple sources.&#160; The GOP has been lying all along.&#160; The stimulus is helping.&#160; Unemployment is higher than predicted not because the stimulus failed, but because the depth and breadth of the havoc GOP policies had on our economy was worse than most realized.&#160; Former readers will remember that I said, before Obama had even won the Democratic nomination, that it would take a generation, not a single presidency to undo the damage that is the legacy of Bush and the GOP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nonpartisan CBO has finally weighed in. For months, conservatives have been claiming that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, i.e. the stimulus) is a \u201cboondoggle\u201d that \u201cfailed\u201d and did not create \u201cone new job.\u201d But last week, the New York Times\u2019 David Leonhardt noted that economic research firms estimate that ARRA created or <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/24\/about-that-useless-stimulus\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}