Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success

I know using facts has become optional in political discourse these days, particularly when Republicans are talking, but in the real world, that is how something is judged. David Leonhardt of the New York Times does a tremendous job of detailing exactly how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act accomplished its goal of stopping the economic slide in a depression and laying the groundwork for a recovery.

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let's say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let's also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs -- employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren't hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill. Link