Quick Fact: Rove baselessly claims stimulus package “impeded” the economic recovery

Written by Tom Allison

Published

On The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Karl Rove baselessly claimed that “the stimulus bill was not stimulative” and that he thought Obama's policies “impeded the recovery.” But the Congressional Budget Office estimated that stimulus spending through September had saved or created as many as 1.6 million jobs and added as much as 3.2 percent to U.S.gross domestic product.

From the December 14 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: I want to get to your report card. On the economy itself, you give the president a?

ROVE: C-minus.

O'REILLY: C-minus.

ROVE: Look, the stimulus bill was not stimulative. The American economy is strong enough it's gonna come out of recession. The question is did these policies impede or speed up its recovery. I think they impeded its recovery. I don't think they sped it up. [The O'Reilly Factor, 12/14/09]

Fact: CBO estimated recovery act created or saved jobs, added to GDP

In a November analysis, the CBO estimated that through the third quarter of 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created or saved between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs and added between 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent to GDP:

CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher, than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA (see Table 1). Those ranges are intended to reflect the uncertainty of such estimates and to encompass most economists' views on the effects of fiscal stimulus. [CBO's “Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output as of September 2009,” November 2009]