Did the stimulus "fail"?

[Anonymous]

I am hearing this as the main sound bite the Republicans are driving home.

Is the stimulus the same as the bail out? I thought I heard that the bail out actually returned money to tax payers?

Did the stimulus fail? I thought things were getting better - slowly, but better.

Does this jobs graph lie?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/023691.php

Foreclosures: I have no defense on that.

So explain to me please, how is the stimulus a "failure"?

[Anonymous]

It is Republican policy (and perhaps Democratic also, although I have a leftish bias and don't see it) that the truth is less important than your message. Listen to what they say as a prescription for what they want to do, not as a description of anything in the real world.

[Anonymous]

I ALWAYS research anything the Republicans state - they're full of propaganda and lies, e.g. health care bill.

If we hadn't had the stimulus, we would have gone into a depression. So, to answer your question, NO, it didn't fail.

[Anonymous]

No. It did what it was supposed to do. The CBO ran the numbers. But the unemployment hole was much bigger than the amount of stimulus.

So in the end, it saved us from going north of 10% unemployment, but it did not fix everything. Of course it wouldn't though. Look at how small the number is compared to the size of our economy.

[Anonymous]

I thought the economists showed that the stimulus prevented the economy from getting worse? The stimulus certainly keeps the consultancies and job market much better in the DC area than it otherwise would be without it. The stimulus is financing many of these beltway bandit jobs!

But then look at the Republican bonehead base ... Sarah Palin et al.

[jsteele]

The stimulus failed to the extent that it wasn't big enough thanks to Obama's concessions to the Republicans. The stimulus was justified on the basis that 8 percent unemployment was unacceptable. Guess what? We have 9 percent unemployment. However, without the stimulus -- as other above have said -- things would even be worse. Therefore, from a Republican perspective, the stimulus failed because it prevented even worse economic conditions from which they could benefit.