By Erik Wasson - 02/22/12 04:37 PM ET The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package continues to have a significant effect.
The bill raised fourth-quarter 2011 gross domestic product by as much as 1.5 percent, it states, and lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.1 percentage points.
The package reduced the rolls of the jobless by up to 2 million people in the last three months of 2011.
The CBO analysis is very similar to the last stimulus report it produced in November. It continues to predict that in 2012, the stimulus will increase the number of people employed by up to 1.1 million.
Despite the CBO figures, the $831 billion stimulus package has not lived up to the claims the administration made when it sold Congress on the bill.
Obama economic adviser Christina Romer claimed the bill would keep unemployment below 8 percent, but the rate spiked to 10 percent in 2009 and remained above 9 percent until last October.
The stimulus will likely remain a centerpiece of GOP attacks on Obama ahead of the November elections.
