This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.

Search form

The White House
Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release

Statement by the Vice President on New CBO Report on Employment and Economic Impact of the Recovery Act

Vice President Joe Biden today issued the following statement on a new report from the Congressional Budget Office on the employment and economic impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

“This new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is further confirmation of what we’ve been hearing from leading economists, the nation’s governors and families across the country: the Recovery Act is working to rescue the economy from eight years of failed economic policy and rebuild it even stronger than before.  When the CBO, Congress’s top watchdog and an institution widely-respected on both sides of the aisle, says that because of the Recovery Act as many as 3.3 million Americans are on the job today and the unemployment rate is as much as 1.8 percent lower, it’s impossible for even the most cynical, bent-on-rooting-for-failure critics to deny.  So while Republicans in Congress – the same party that got us into this mess in the first place - may want to turn back the clock and drive us back into the same ditch we’re making our way out of, it’s now clearer than ever before that we can’t afford to go backward; we have to keep moving forward and build on measures like the Recovery Act that are creating jobs and making us competitive in the 21st century economy.”

According to the CBO report, “Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from April 2010 through June 2010,” in the second quarter of 2010, the Recovery Act:
• Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million

The report can be viewed in full HERE.