Congressional Budget Office defends stimulus

[alp227]

Source: Washington Post

Did the stimulus work?

Certainly not according to Republicans, who regularly blast President Obama’s “failed” economic policies on the campaign trail. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has called the $787 billion package of temporary tax cuts and spending hikes “the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history.”

But on Wednesday, under questioning from skeptical Republicans, the director of the nonpartisan (and widely respected) Congressional Budget Office was emphatic about the value of the 2009 stimulus. And, he said, the vast majority of economists agree.

In a survey conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 80 percent of economic experts agreed that, because of the stimulus, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been otherwise.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/congressional-budget-office-defends-stimulus/2012/06/06/gJQAnFnjJV_story.html

[jtuck004]

1. and?

Isn't it kinda obvious that it helped to anyone but a science hater?

Not enough to compensate for the harm Mi$$ Rmoney and his slimy clan did.

Need more stim, in a way Mi$$ can't get his filthy hands on it. Needs to help people get better. I don't think $1500 tax breaks is the answer, even combined with a simply AWESOME "tax breaks for business" bullet point.

But it could be a nationwide chain of futuristic adult schools, no tuition, we invest in mentors, teachers, not so much admin. Run correctly it will increase demand, the students will figure out where to get the money. Maybe students take on lowering health care costs as a networked science project.

Add to this a direct employment program, say 10 million people @ $30K plus insurance, two years.

No junk bond financing, so that lets out Blackstone, KKR, Bain, a few others. I would pay higher taxes to invest $3 trillion or so into it.

We're gonna pay it out anyway, might as well get something we can give the kids to build on in our lifetime.