Has President Obama’s economic stimulus package, passed by Congress in 2009, been bad for the economy and bad for jobs, as some Republicans now argue?
According to an Aug. 24, 2010 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, there would have been significantly higher job loss without the stimulus, also known as the Recovery Act.
The CBO estimates that the Recovery Act had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:
- Raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
- Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
- Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
- Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1).