Beck declares the stimulus a failure at creating jobs

Beck calls stimulus ineffective, attacks Obama over job creation. On the October 27 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, Beck criticized Obama's record of creating jobs and claimed that the stimulus has been ineffective.

Independent and private analysts: Stimulus raised employment by millions

CEA: ARRA raised employment “by between 2.5 and 3.6 million.” In its fourth quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) stated that “as of the second quarter of 2010, the ARRA has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.5 and 3.6 million. These estimates are broadly consistent with the direct recipient reporting data available for 2010:Q1.”

CBO estimates stimulus increased employment by up to 3.3 million jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in August that as of the second quarter of 2010, the stimulus had "[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million."

Independent analysts agree that recovery act significantly raised employment. In its quarterly report, the CEA included figures from independent analyses that also credited the recovery act with increasing employment:

Blinder and Zandi: “Without the government's response ... payroll employment would be less by some 8 1/2 million jobs.” In July, former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder and Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi issued a report citing analytic models to demonstrate that the “multifaceted and bipartisan” response to the financial crisis, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had a “huge” effect on real GDP, jobs, and inflation, and “probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.” Blinder and Zandi estimated that “without the government's response” to the financial crisis, “payroll employment would be less by some 8 1/2 million jobs.

Administration estimated stimulus would increase employment by between 3.3 and 4.1 million jobs by the end of 2010. In a January 9, 2009, report on the job impact of a “prototypical” stimulus package “in the range that the President-Elect has discussed,” former CEA chair Christina Romer and vice-presidential economics adviser Jared Bernstein estimated that a stimulus package would raise employment by between “3.3 to 4.1 million jobs” by the end of 2010. The report clearly notes that this estimate is calculated “relative to the no-stimulus baseline.”