The blathering in the right-wing echo chamber that the “stimulus” didn’t work continues to defy both logic and facts. The logic that G is an important part of GDP (where GDP = G + I + C + NetE) continues to confuse them. And the facts are that more people are employed and at higher wages due to the ARRA than would have been had the ARRA not been passed.
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased the number of people employed by between 300,000 and 2 million jobs in December.
CBO’s analysis finds that ARRA has significantly boosted both the number of people employed and the number of hours worked. ARRA protected the economy during the worst of the recession, and nearly three years after its enactment, it is still saving and creating jobs. Without it, up to two million more workers in December would have been either unemployed or struggling to get by on less income.
Imagine how much better the economy would be doing if the ARRA had been 2x bigger. We’d likely be out of the hole now and our GDP would be growing fast enough to cover the expense in a few years.
I would still like to know how many jobs were created by Obama’s stimulus vs. Walker’s leadership in the WI.