U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY: THANKS TO THE STIMULUS PACKAGE

On February 13, 2009, in direct response to the economic crisis and at the urging of President Obama, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- commonly referred to as the "stimulus" or the "stimulus package." Four days later, the President signed the Recovery Act into law. The three immediate goals of the Recovery Act were:

1. Create new jobs and save existing ones
2. Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
3. Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending

 The Recovery Act was intended to achieve those goals by providing funding for:

1. Tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses
2. Funding for entitlement programs, such as unemployment benefits
3. Funding for federal contracts, grants and loans

In 2011, the original expenditure estimate of $787 billion was increased to $840 billion to be in line with the President's 2012 budget and with scoring changes made by the Congressional Budget Office since the enactment of the Recovery Act.

After an epic financial crisis, the Recovery Act did launch a recovery. The economy started growing again in summer 2009. It started adding jobs again in spring 2010.

The stimulus spelled the difference between contraction and growth for much of Obama’s first term. The Recovery Act increased U.S. GDP by roughly 2 to 2.5 percentage points from late 2009 through mid-2011, keeping the U.S. out of a double-dip recession. It added about 6 million “job years” (a full-time job for a full year) through the end of 2012. If you combine the Recovery Act with a series of follow-up measures, including unemployment-insurance extensions, small-business tax cuts and payroll tax cuts, the Administration’s fiscal stimulus produced a 2% to 3% increase in GDP in every quarter from late 2009 through 2012, and 9 million extra job years.

The Recovery Act’s aid to victims of the Great Recession — in the form of expanded food stamps, earned-income tax credits, unemployment benefits and much more — directly prevented 5.3 million people from slipping below the poverty line. It also improved nearly 42,000 miles of roads, repaired over 2,700 bridges, funded 12,220 transit vehicles

 The Recovery Act jump-started clean energy in America, financing unprecedented investments in wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable sources of electricity. It advanced biofuels, electric vehicles and energy efficiency in every imaginable form. It helped fund the factories to build all that green stuff in the U.S., and research into the green technologies of tomorrow. It’s the reason U.S. wind production has increased 145% since 2008 and solar installations have increased more than 1,200%. The stimulus is also the reason the use of electronic medical records has more than doubled in doctors’ offices and almost quintupled in hospitals. It improved more than 110,000 miles of broadband infrastructure. It launched Race to the Top, the most ambitious national education reform in decades.

The Recovery Act succeeded in creating jobs, boosting growth and saving the US from a much worse fate.