The White House will report on September 10 on the number of jobs saved and created under President Barack Obama's $787 billion program to jump-start the economy, an administration official said on Thursday. Obama's economic stimulus plan, passed by the US Congress in February, aims to save or create 3.5 million jobs over two years, although many economists have questioned how the administration plans to measure the number of jobs "saved".
"The Council on Economic Advisers plans to report to the nation on September 10th their projections of jobs created and jobs saved as a result of the Recovery Act," a White House official said. With polls showing Americans increasingly concerned about the size of the record US deficit, Vice President Joe Biden will say in a speech on Thursday that Obama's economic stimulus package of tax cuts and infrastructure spending saved the United States from another Great Depression.
"One of the criticisms of the Recovery Act is that it is simply a grab bag of different programs. But the fact that the Recovery Act is multifaceted doesn't reflect a lack of design ... it is the design. Our economy is so complex and so wounded that reinvigorating one segment alone or using one tool alone would never do all that needs to be done.
"There is no silver bullet. The Recovery Act provides silver buckshot," Biden will say at the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington, according to advance excerpts of his speech. Congressional Republicans say the stimulus package has done little to counter the effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment is expected to top 10 percent this year. The White House and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimate the US budget deficit will reach a record $1.6 trillion for this fiscal year.