At a hearing today of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending to discuss President Obama’s jobs proposal, Subcommittee Ranking Member Dennis Kucinich entered a series of documents into the record in response to a staff report issued by the Majority on September 8, 2011 claiming that the entire stimulus failed.
The Majority's staff report cites only a single study-an analysis issued in May 2011 by researchers at Ohio State University-which has been widely discredited by economists because of its flawed methodology.
Kucinich entered an analysis by economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and Dean Baker into the record, both of which debunked the Ohio State University study due to flawed methodology. Kucinich also entered into the record a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that found that the President’s stimulus plan worked. Here are CBO’s top findings:
CBO estimates that the stimulus’ policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2011 compared with what would have occurred otherwise:
* They raised real gross domestic product by between 0.8 percent and 2.5 percent;
* Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.5 percentage points and 1.6 percentage points;
* Increased the number of people employed by between 1 million and 2.9 million; and
* Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 1.4 million to 4 million.
