Good question from John Aravosis:
Pretty good AP story about how the GOP is basically lying about the effect of their budget cutting, and the stimulus, on job creation (their budget cutting will kill jobs, the stimulus created them). But why did AP use the old CBO study of the stimulus bill and not the newest one that shows a heck of a lot bigger impact of the stimulus on job creation?
The AP story says: "The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in late 2009 the stimulus 'lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points and increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million compared with what those values would have been otherwise.'"
That's from a CBO estimate that's been made obsolete by one released in May, 2010 that found the stimulus "put up to 3.4 million people to work and boosted GDP by up to 4.6 percent in the first three months of 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday."
By the third quarter of 2010 the CBO estimated "the Recovery Act increased employment by up to 3.6 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate by up to 2.0 percentage points."
Research is hard, but if bloggers can do it, why can't AP reporters?