In February 2009, President Obama signed the Democrats’ $1 trillion stimulus plan into law.  As shown in their infamous January 2009 Romer-Bernstein Report (officially titled “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan”), the Obama Administration predicted that with their stimulus plan the unemployment rate would remain below 8 percent and ultimately fall to 5.2 percent today.  As depicted in the blue line below, Administration economists also predicted that without their stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would peak at 9 percent and be only 5.5 percent today.  If only they were right.  Instead, unemployment reached 10 percent, was above 9 percent for 30 months, and was above 8 percent for 43 months.  Today’s 7.9 percent unemployment rate is 44 percent higher than the Administration’s “without stimulus” forecast for January 2013.  Meanwhile, the American people will spend over $1 trillion to achieve worse “job impacts” than the Administration predicted if there were no “stimulus” at all. More debt and more unemployment – a classic case of making a bad situation even worse.

Source: Department of Labor unemployment rate data and Obama Administration projections.

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