Republicans have labelled President Obama’s stimulus act a failure. And Democrats haven’t bothered to defend it much. But msnbc contributor Ezra Klein has crunched the numbers—and the law was actually a major success.
Klein and colleagues at The Washington Post reviewed 15 economic studies of the stimulus and found that only two didn’t think it had helped the recovery—and one of them said the reason was because the stimulus wasn’t big enough.
Similarly, the University of Chicago did a study of 40 economists, 92% of whom “agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate,” according to Bloomberg.
“The stimulus’ real name was Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” Klein noted. “We spend all of our time really talking about that recovery part, the short term side, the create-jobs side, but a lot of it was this long-term reinvestment side—this creating a future for the economy side.” The act, Klein said, invested billions in clean energy efforts, education, and high-speed rail, long-term efforts that are “fundamentally changing the economy.” WATCH KLEIN RUN THE NUMBERS ABOVE
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