Stimulus Plan Failure? Not bloody likely.

While Tea Partiers and republicans alike are calling the stimulus plan a failure since 2009, it fails to recognize what it did accomplish.  While Obama and his camp predicted 3.5 million jobs would come as a result of it, in February of 2010, 3 different independent economic research firms [ http://www.tnr.com/topics/ihs-global-insight; http://www.tnr.com/topics/macroeconomic-advisers;http://www.tnr.com/topics/moody ]  stated that the stimulus had already resulted in 1.6 to 1.8 million new jobs.  And that it eventually would result in over 2.5 million jobs. 

Updated research since then, by the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the stimulus resulted in 1.2 to 3.3 million and would ultimately have the impact of creating the equivalent of 1.5 to 4.6 million full-time jobs ( the CBO is a non-partisan arm of the legislature,  [ http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12185/05-25-ARRA.pdf ] )  As far as the amount fraud initially predicted by the republicans, it has been practically non-existent compared to the funds for Katrina (a bailout in everyway) and of course the Iraqi reconstruction.  Only 1.9 million dollars have been found in fraud as prosecutable, compared to the billions during the Bush years.  Maybe Democrats are just inherently more honest.  That's a horse I'd bet on.

While the levels the economy have dipped to were not foreseen by Obama, neither did anyone else.  And the foresight the Obama administration showed in dedicating a sixth of the stimulus to Green Energy can only pay off in benefits for our country.  We have to face facts.  The amount our country is putting into research and development of Green Energy is still a drop in the bucket of our GDP, when compared to what portion other developed countries are putting into it.  Even oil rich countries like Norway are putting MORE total dollars into their programs than we are.  That's not good enough.  Not by a longshot.  And not a single GOP candidate has expressed any interest in extending our efforts.  In fact, most have spoken of only more drilling and pulling back on Green efforts.  And that's called capitalist cronyism.