Taking the GOP to Task on the Recovery Act

The party’s over for GOP leaders who have either been dissing the Recovery Act in Washington and taking credit for Recovery Act projects in their districts, or pushing outrageous falsehoods that the largest stimulus in United States history has been no help at all. That's not how it works.

A few key facts: Every single House Republication voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In May, the Recovery Act increased personal, disposable income by $17 billion. Last week, the Department of Education announced it was releasing $2.7 billion in aid to support state education budgets months ahead of schedule. And right now, over 2,000 highway projects are already under way and over $20 billion in transportation construction funds have been put to work. There’s absolutely no denying that without the Recovery Act our economy would be in much worse shape. According to a recent analysis by respected economist Mark Zandi, by the end of next year, the Recovery Act “…leaves the unemployment rate almost 2 percentage points lower” than it would have been otherwise.

To point: Earlier this week, the DNC released a TV ad calling on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to stop playing partisan games and start offering real solutions. Then yesterday, the DNC held a press conference call to talk about Recovery Act projects and job creation in Ohio, and released a new web video which highlights John Boehner’s (OH) extreme hypocrisy and factual inaccuracy in his claim that none of the contracts for Ohio infrastructure projects resulting from Recovery Act had been okayed. As the video’s narrator puts it: “His own state’s newspaper found that Boehner was flat wrong.” In fact, in Boehner’s district alone nearly $15 million has been authorized or awarded to recovery projects that are putting more and more Ohioans back to work everyday. You can watch the ad below.

UPDATE: In an oped this week, Republican Whip Jon Kyl called for the cancellation of the economic recovery money and said the funds are not putting Americans to work. Taking Kyl to task, Arizona Democratic Party Executive Director Luis Heredia and DNC Press Secretary Hari Sevugan held a conference call this afternoon to highlight the importance of economic recovery funding for Arizona projects. The DNC also released a new web video, "Job Killing John."