Obama: Job Losses Prove Stimulus Worked

Fred Lucas at CNS News:

“Now, without relitigating the past, I’m absolutely convinced, and the vast majority of economists are convinced, that the steps we took in the Recovery Act saved millions of people their jobs or created a whole bunch of jobs,” Obama said at his Monday press conference.

There’s a couple things wrong with this. First, relitigating isn’t a real word. Now I’m not one to nitpick the president’s grammar, but given the way the media had a cow over every Bush gaffe, I think it’s relevant to point out. Second, Obama makes an assertion without citing any evidence. Just because you’re the president, doesn’t mean you get to make up facts. The assertion he made is flat out wrong. You can find plenty of economists on both sides of the aisle, but there is far from a “vast majority of economists” convinced of anything. As the saying goes: ask two economists a question and you’ll get at least three opinions.

Third—and most important—the assertion is completely moot, you can’t say the stimulus worked or didn’t worked based on what might have happened. There are too many variables. It’s impossible to say what the economy would look like had the stimulus not passed. So, the only way to judge the stimulus is based on the current economic conditions (pro tip: they suck). At last, the stimulus has failed based on the standards set by Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisers:

Their report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also included a chart predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

(Via George Will at Politifact)

So, which part of the stimulus worked?