The union is in a state of deep and justifiable anxiety about jobs and mortgages and two long, bloody wars. President Obama did not create these problems, and none could be solved in one year. But 2009 offered powerful and, at times, bruising lessons for a new president struggling to fulfill the seismic promise of his election.
Stimulus Jobs
Obama heralded the $787 billion stimulus plan as saving millions of American jobs.
“Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed; 200,000 work in construction and clean energy, 300,000 are teachers and other education workers,” the president said tonight. “Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”
The White House projects that the stimulus has helped “save or create” 2 million jobs, a number not too far from that estimated by the CBO.
But the figures that the president was citing for workers and teachers are from a different assessment. Those numbers are determined based on responses from recipients of the stimulus money, and those haven’t always been accurate. For example, last November, Recovery.gov claimed that in Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs had been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending.
The president praised his administration’s tax cuts amid a chorus of boos from Republicans.
“Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college,” the president said tonight.
“As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime,” he added.
What the president was referring to is the Making Work Pay tax credit, as part of which working individuals would receive a maximum of $400 and couples filing jointly $800 on their 2009 and 2010 tax returns.
But it is difficult to determine whether the tax cuts specifically affected families per se or individuals.
In making this statement today, the president was following up on his promise from his address to Congress last February, when he promised that “95 percent of working households in America will receive a tax cut.”
