The Republicans' Increasingly Awkward Dance Around the Truth

By Jared Bernstein,
Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden
Huffington Post
Posted: August 25, 2010 05:17 PM


Ever since the Recovery Act passed last February, Congressional Republicans who opposed this economic rescue plan have had to do an awkward dance around the truth. After all, when you declare from the beginning that the Recovery Act won't create a single job, you're going to be forced to do a little two-step around the facts as week after week leading economists, the nation's governors, and even your own constituents say otherwise.

But yesterday, when Representative Boehner declared that "all this 'stimulus' spending has gotten us nowhere" on the same day the nonpartisan CBO said the program has created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs nationwide and his own home state's Department of Transportation said nearly 9,500 construction workers were on the job in July just on Ohio Recovery Act transportation projects alone... well, let's just say that dance got a little more... awkward.

Now, Representative Boehner was one of the first to declare the Recovery Act dead on arrival -- the day it was signed into law, he declared it would "do little to create jobs." But as soon as June 2009, as funding for Recovery Act transportation projects began to flow into Ohio, he said those dollars would be used for -- get this -- "shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs."

And then when the nonpartisan CBO, Congress's top watchdog and an institution widely respected on both sides of the aisle, began weighing in on the job impact of the Recovery Act, the dance got a little more complicated. Check out these quotes from Rep Boehner, followed by the facts:


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