President Barack Obama argued today that an unprecedented and controversial 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, signed into law exactly one year ago, was the principal reason the United States avoided a second Great Depression, dpa reported. Yet Obama also acknowledged that, with an unemployment rate still near 10 per cent, most people had yet to truly reap the benefits of the country's uneasy economic recovery. Private sector hiring had yet to fully replace the stepped-up government spending. "It is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second depression is no longer a possibility," Obama said in a speech from the White House, touting figures that suggested the stimulus had helped businesses create or retain about 2 million workers. But, Obama said: "It doesn't yet feel like much of a recovery, and I understand that." The 787-billion-dollar public spending package has been the central element of the Obama administration's effort to jump-start the US economy with a mix of tax cuts, infrastructure spending, and aid for crippled state budgets. But the stimulus was criticized by conservatives as wasteful spending that unnecessarily raised the federal deficit, which ballooned to more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009. "The American people took on record amounts of debt to fund Washington Democrats' trillion-dollar stimulus and a year later the nations unemployment rate is near 10 per cent," said Congressman John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives. "Struggling families and small businesses are rightly asking 'where are the jobs?'" The US economy began growing again towards the middle of last year and output surged at an annual rate of 5.7 per cent in the final three months of 2009, a sharp turnaround after the US went through its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But the jobless rate remained at a quarter-century high of 9.7 per cent in January, putting pressure on Obama and his fellow Democrats to take more steps to help get people back to work. Public anger over the still-sputtering labour market and skyrocketing debt levels were in part to blame for the left-leaning Democratic Party's election losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts over the last few months. Congress, which in recess this week because of the US President's Day holiday, will be considering a second jobs stimulus package when lawmakers get back to Washington next week.
