Fox News has gone to great lengths to declare the stimulus bill a failure, often complaining that the stimulus “failed to keep unemployment under 8 percent.” What Fox is not saying, however, is that the recovery act successfully kept the unemployment rate from being far higher than it is right now.

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not report that unemployment currently stood at 11.4 percent. They did not do so because the economic recovery act reduced unemployment by as much as 1.8 percent. That figure comes from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Independent analysts concur that more than 2 million workers would be unemployed but for the stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama and vehemently opposed by Congressional Republicans.

This is not to suggest that a 9.6 percent unemployment rate is cause for celebration. In fact, many economists have been calling for additional stimulus for more than a year. But heading into Labor Day weekend, it is clear that the stimulus kept unemployment lower than it would have been, providing millions of jobs that otherwise would have disappeared.

Maybe that's why Fox relies on distorted economic data and make believe economic contractions to make its case.