Article

Lessons Learned from the Recovery Act

Scott Lilly writes that there are lessons to be learned from the new job growth numbers.

Early last July, House Minority Leader John Boehner borrowed two bloodhounds and made a commercial entitled “Where are the Jobs?” He clearly got his answer this morning. Both the household and business surveys used by the Labor Department to gauge the employment situation showed solid job growth in March. The household survey now shows the economy has added more than a million jobs since Christmas.

There are several lessons in these numbers for those who care to learn them. The first is that the federal government can’t turn the U.S. economy around in six months any more than a battleship can be turned around in a bath tub. If Boehner had wanted to see job growth last July he should have supported the jobs bill that died in Congress the previous fall.

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Authors

Scott Lilly

Senior Fellow