Freshly after being sworn in as Massachusetts' newest senator, Scott Brown declared that the stimulus "didn't create one new job." But that didn't stop the Republican from joining five other GOP senators in voting for cloture on the Senate jobs bills on Monday.
Maybe he just wants to get re-elected. Or maybe he got an advance peek at the report issued by the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday asserting that in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone, the stimulus created between 1 and 2.1 million jobs.
CBO estimates that in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2009, ARRA added between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States, and it increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by between 1.4 million and 3.0 million. Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers. CBO also estimates that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.5 percent to 3.5 percent higher in the fourth quarter than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA.
The CBO is as close to nonpartisan as it gets in the federal government and the CBO says the stimulus put people to work and increased economic growth.
The full report is here.
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