About That 'Failed' Stimulus...

Jonathan Cohn
TNR
August 24, 2011 | 12:00 am

The economy is sluggish and unemployment is on the rise, but Republicans and their allies say they want nothing to do with President Obama’s agenda for job creation because it’ll be just another “failed stimulus." Here's John Boehner making that argument on his official blog. Here's Karl Rove doing the same on Fox News. And here's Richard Posner offering his version at TNR -- although, to be fair, he merely calls the stimulus "botched" and I'm not sure he qualifies as a Republican ally.

Of course, the argument isn't new. The phrase "failed stimulus" has been a staple of Republican rhetoric since the fall of 2009. But it was wrong then and it’s wrong now, at least according to the the people most qualified to judge it. As David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times:

Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs.

(More here.)