Only $100 billion of the $787 billion stimulus package passed nine months ago has actually been spent by the federal government so far, with another $90 billion of stimulus coming in the form of tax reductions, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Monday evening. That leaves three quarters of the package — and its stimulative effects — yet to come…

The CBO estimates that between 600,000 and 1.6 million people were employed in the third quarter of 2009 who otherwise would not have been. The spending and tax cuts raised the Gross Domestic Product by somewhere between 1.2 and 3.2 percent, it found, and reduced unemployment by 0.3 to 0.9 percent…

First off, I wish I had the CBO’s estimates for the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2009 — anybody else see them someplace?  Let us know if so.

Secondly, there is still over $687 Billion dollars left to stimulate the economy with, the bulk of which was planned to be released in 2010.  This should be wonderful news for those unemployed.  It should also lift the spirits of those concerned about losing their jobs.

Thirdly, I’m no mathematician but $100 billion of $787 billion is ‘not’ a quarter of the package, it’s only about 1/8th of it.  Which means if over a million jobs were saved or created using only 1/8 of the stimulus package, then by the time all of the stimulus money is used (if it is to be done in 2010), it would have saved or created a possible 8 million jobs by the end of 2010.

Fourthly, if only 1/8th of the stimulus raised the GDP by an average of 2.2 percent and reduced unemployment by 0.6 percent, then by the end of 2010 it will have raised the GDP by a great deal more and dropped unemployment by around 4 percent.  We’d be back to around 6% unemployment, close to what it was when Clinton/Gore left office in January of 2001.

Unless something drastic were to happen between now and this time next year, our economy will be in pretty darn good shape considering we came a hair’s breath away from another Great Depression a year earlier.

Republicans as usual are trying to discourage Americans about the economy, they are basically praying the predictions aren’t true:

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), told HuffPost Monday night that he’s not buying the CBO estimate.

“The White House claimed that if we passed the trillion-dollar ’stimulus’ unemployment would stay below 8 percent and jobs would be created ‘immediately.’ Instead, unemployment is over 10 percent, more than three million more Americans are out of work, and folks are asking ‘where are the jobs?’” he wrote in an e-mail.

Isn’t it odd how the CBO’s figures are ‘ok’ one time but not all the time?

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