The Democratic Stimulus Bill worked. Nearly 600,000 new private sector jobs were created and millions more jobs were not lost because of the funding to the states and the money put directly into the pockets of Middle Class consumers by the Democratic Stimulus Bill.
States were able to keep first responders like cops, firefighters and emergency medical technicians on the streets and teachers in their classrooms for the duration of the Stimulus. Now the funds are winding down and nearly gone and states are slashing payrolls which had been, ahem, “stimulated” by the federal dollars allocated to the various states See here, here and here.
For each of the past 23 months there has been private sector job growth totaling some 3.7 million jobs, says President Obama. Unemployment is now at 8.3 percent and trending downward from a high of just over 10% in September of 2009. Interestingly, government employment is down under Obama with mostly states and local governments having shed some 535,000 jobs. If states had been able to receive the extra monies from President Obama’s Jobs Act, it is likely the unemployment rate would be under seven percent.
After the debacle of the end of last year when Republicans took a beating for delaying the renewal of the payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans and the extension of unemployment benefits for some 2.5 million of the 15 million unemployed as well as the “doctor fix” on Medicare, Republicans cooperated with the President to extend those to the end of 2012.
President Obama has been less conciliatory towards Republicans and their intransigence in opposing every effort of the President to improve the economy. The President’s new found resilience in the face of steadfast opposition from Republicans has born fruit as many voters blame the Republicans for the economy and see Republicans as more of an obstacle to what is needed to keep the recovery on track. As a result, the approval ratings of President Obama have gone over 50% for the first time in eight months. It seems the only way backwards for Mr. Obama is if he is not partisan enough as voters flock to his banner in better numbers than 2008.
I don’t think you can credit the stimulus with anything other than saving a couple hundred thousand public sector jobs. You’ll notice that job growth didn’t begin in earnest until the stimulus stopped and some progress was made on reducing the deficit. I really do think that the deficits are a confidence destroyer, especially given what is going on in Europe.
It makes perfect sense to run deficits during a recession, but running huge deficits after we already had big deficits during the Bush years? It just doesn’t work. Keynes said you have to run surpluses in the good years and deficits in the bad years. Running small deficits in the good years and huge deficits in the bad years is not Keynesian.