Kudos to Klein ABC News’ Rick Klein for doing his job by pointing out how the Obama Administration is "Moving the Stimulus Goalposts."
Klein writes:
Today brings this explanation, from Christina Romer, the chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisers: Stimulus spending, Romer told the Financial Times, is “going to ramp up strongly through the summer and the fall.”
“We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months. The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards,” Romer said.
[emphasis mine]
Oh, but this is not what the administration was saying during the rush to pass the stimulus, nor soon after, as Klein documents:
Back in February, with Congress moving swiftly to approve President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, White House budget director Peter Orszag said the benefits of the stimulus would be “take weeks to months” to be felt.
Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, was even more optimistic: “You'll see the effects begin almost immediately,” Summers told CNN in February.
Just last month, Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, joined administration officials in asserting that the stimulus was already working, despite rising unemployment rates.
“The idea here is that, yes, the unemployment rate is rising, but it would be rising more quickly [without the bill],” Bernstein said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.” “We're spending about $1 billion a day -- and, by the way, with very careful oversight -- and that's creating, again, economic activity that would not have occurred in the absence of this plan. That's the essential point.”
[emphasis mine]
Klein goes on to discuss the chart below that the administration released in a January report supportive of the stimulus plan. Of course, the unemployment rate is currently 9.4 percent, higher than predicted without the stimulus.
It's always nice to see the media follow up on claims made by the Obama Administration to check for accuracy. I hope to see Klein come back to this in a few months to check up on this latest declaration. Perhaps we will see a monthly moving of the goalposts as the stimulus continues to disappoint.