Wednesday, November 23, 2011

CBO: Stimulus Created 6 Million Jobs and Lowered Unemployment

Update: See how the rightwing Newsmax wrote this story based on the same information here. 

The republicans won the stimulus debate even though they were wrong. What I have always wondered is how could people believe that the stimulus didn't create jobs? The money went to keeping teachers, firefighters, police... employed. But republicans don't count those as jobs for some reason. Republicans seem to be only interested in one constituent -- the wealthy.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Tuesday that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy.

The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total.

CBO said that the stimulus also lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.2 and 1.3 percentage points and increased the number of people employed by between 0.4 million and 2.4 million. The Hill