Can we stop with the myth that President Obama's January 2009 economic stimulus failed?
I'll agree it was too small, but not that it failed.
Look at this chart comparing raw quarterly job growth numbers under President Bush (red line) and under President Obama (blue line). The January 2009 stimulus clearly stopped the collapse, and we're back to the same speed on job growth as we had under Bush, but things feel bad now because the too-small stimulus hasn't made up yet for the 6.7M jobs lost since 2007 that are still missing, and for the bit of population growth we've had since then, too.
We lost 8.7M from late 2007 up to January 2009, but gained 2.0M so far since then.
Now, if you're muttering to yourself like a good Teapartier, "Well, that's because of the vast increase in the size of government since the Kenyan socialist took over," YOU'RE WRONG!
And you can see it for yourself on the very same chart: The dotted green line is the growth in U.S. Private Payrolls (that is, non-government jobs), so when Private Payrolls are growing more than Total Payrolls, that means that Government Payrolls are shrinking.
More simply:
When the green dotted line was BELOW the solid line, government GREW.
When the green dotted line was ABOVE the solid line, government SHRANK.
In short, under Bush, government grew; under Obama, it shrank. Those are the facts, and you are absolutely entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
And just in case you need those facts spelled out for you more directly: Under President Obama, the size of government has shrunk, not grown. See it here:
And, by the way, that spike in government job growth at the end of 2009 was not related to Obama. It was temporary census hiring that happens every decade.
6:25 PM PT: A HIGHLY recommended update: Read Ezra Klein's very detailed, very interesting piece from his WaPo blog written yesterday about the economic history of the Obama Administration. It's a solid piece of objective journalism, and quite the readable history.