Why do Republicans Hate the Stimulus? Because it Worked!

In fact, we could use another one.

Here’s a screen shot of employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I added the stimulus and outlier graphics. Out of fairness, the huge increase in employment in 2010 reflects the huge number of people hired to conduct the census. That was short lived. However, even controlling for this outlier, the trend is clear. An upward trend. Yes, since the census job growth has been rather flat. This shows the bias of choosing your starting dates for the graph. That being said, it’s clear that another stimulus should be in order. Perhaps the American Jobs Act, which Republicans will not allow out of Congress.

What happened to GDP? Well, here it is (year.quarter). Real GDP, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, has been steadily increasing. We can argue that it hasn’t increased fast enough. Perhaps another stimulus is in order.

But what would happen to the deficit? The graph below suggests that there might just be an uptick in the deficit…temporarily. Notice that before the end of Obama’s first year in office, the deficit started going down. And no, you can’t credit a Republican congress for this turnaround. The turnaround started in 2010. The Republican Congress did not take their seats until 2011.

And the debt? It looks like a stimulus would do nothing to decrease the growth of the debt. However, it doesn’t look like it increases the growth of the debt. Yes, the debt grew. But it grew at exactly the same rate as it was before Obama took office.