Oops, we missed it

OK, what if there was a stimulus but nobody noticed? Top White House economist Christina Romer told a congressional committee this week the $787 billion stimulus package passed earlier this year already has had its biggest impact on growth and probably won’t help much next year. Although only about $200 billion of the package has been spent, the rest won’t drive expansion next year, Romer said. That’s especially bad news for the nearly 10 percent of Americans without jobs. It’s bad news for taxpayers, too, because the stimulus was sold as an emergency measure to perk up the economy. Instead, it appears there was a little stimulus and a lot of something else — all billed to the country’s credit card. Meanwhile, Romer said unemployment will remain high through the end of 2010, which begs the question of how much worse joblessness and other economic statistics would have been without the stimulus and all the extra debt that came with it.

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