Pass the stimulus, and unemployment will never go above 8%
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Outside of my obvious pro-Fox News bias, ABC’s Jake Tapper seems to be doing most of the heavy lifting for the entire profession of journalism these days (along with a couple of others.)
Yesterday he asked Robert Gibbs about a report that the Obama administration released in January—which showed what could happen to the unemployment rate if their world saving stimulus package was not passed (graph on page 5). Here are the highlights:
1) By their own estimation, the stimulus isn’t working as planned: The administration’s own estimates said that if the stimulus would pass, the unemployment rate would never rise above 8%. Its peak would be around 7.9% around the end of the year. Well…It’s at 8.5% already, and most economists seem to it’s getting worse before it gets better.
2) By their own estimation, the stimulus might be making things worse: The administration’s report showed that the unemployment rate would be about 8.1% right now if we had done NOTHING. So, it’s either that the stimulus plan is actually making things worse, or the economy is significantly worse than they thought. Which brings me to #3 …
3) What does this do to their estimates?: If their economic prognosis was this far off, this soon, what does this do to their deficit estimates 6 or 8 years out? They already were very ugly, but doesn’t this make them far worse?
Now, they do admit that there are high levels of uncertainty in their estimates–but this is the scenario that they’ve planned for. It’s early proof that the charges of “rosy scenarios” were correct.
Now who’s ready for their universal healthcare estimates?
