White House: Stimulus was good for economy
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — The costly $787 billion spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law soon after taking office boosted the economy and helped avoid another Great Depression, the White House said in a status report on Monday’s fifth anniversary of the law’s enactment. Republican leaders in Congress took note of the anniversary, too, but argued that the bill spent too much for too little in return. White House economic adviser Jason Furman said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made other targeted investments that will pay dividends for years to come. By itself, the stimulus bill saved or created an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years through the end of 2012, Furman said in a White House blog post. More than 40,000 miles of roads and more than 2,700 bridges have been upgraded, nearly 700 drinking water systems serving more than 48 million people have been brought into compliance with federal clean water standards and high-speed Internet was introduced to about 20,000 community institutions. “While these figures are substantial, they still never- theless understate the full magnitude of the administration’s response to the crisis,” Furman wrote. Republicans were in less of a mood to celebrate. “The ‘stimulus’ has turned out to be a classic case of big promises and big spending with little results,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a written statement. “Five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, millions of families are still asking ‘Where are the jobs?’”