The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era

talkingpointsmemo.com — The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is, as Vice President Biden would say, a BFD, both the short-term Recovery and the long-term Reinvestment. Even though Washington thinks it’s a joke. Even though the country agrees. In 2010, a poll found that the percentage of Americans who believed the stimulus created jobs was lower than the percentage who believed Elvis was alive. The stimulus helped prevent a full-blown depression, that the economy was bleeding an unthinkable 800,000 jobs a month before the stimulus helped cauterize the wound. But it’s hard to remember just how horrible things were when Obama took office, and just how quickly the stimulus started to turn things around.

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