Via Breitbart, what on earth is he talking about? Does he mean … TARP? There’s a case to be made there about averting a depression, but TARP was famously (or rather, infamously) an initiative spearheaded by the dreaded Bushitler and his lackey Hank Paulson. It drew bipartisan support; it wasn’t some sort of Harry Reid brainstorm. And besides — voters hate it. Why even allude to it this late in the campaign?
Or does he mean the stimulus, which voters also dislike thanks to its porkiness and the fact that they spent $800 billion only to bog down in 9.6 percent unemployment (17.1 percent unemployment if you include discouraged workers)? Says David Freddoso of Nevada’s 14.4 percent unemployment rate, if you live there “you probably feel like you are in the middle of a worldwide depression.”
In July, former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder and Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi issued a report citing analytic models to demonstrate that the "multifaceted and bipartisan" response to the financial crisis, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - both of which passed the Senate under Reid's leadership -- had a "huge" effect on real GDP, jobs, and inflation, and "probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0":
On January 3, 2011 the GOP assumes responsibility for deficit spending.
