Soledad O'Brien Cues Up Obama Campaign Operative to Agree There Should Be Another Stimulus
Quoting a
study used by the Democratic-appointed CBO director to defend the
stimulus plan, O'Brien asked President Obama's deputy campaign manager if there should be another
stimulus, on Monday's Starting Point.
"So, is the takeaway from this, the stimulus worked, so there should be another stimulus?" O'Brien asked after touting a survey of economists that included the Obama's former economic advisers.
[Video below. Audio here.]
CBO director Douglas Elmendorf had staunchly defended
Obama's stimulus plan last week before Congress, and he cited the
survey of economists who said unemployment would have been higher
without it. Elmendorf was jointly appointed by then-Speaker Pelosi and
then-Senator Robert Byrd in 2009 as the CBO director.
The study in question was conducted by the University of Chicago's
business school and involved over 40 economists. 80 percent of them
either strongly agreed or agreed with the premise that the nation's
unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been
had the stimulus bill not been enacted.
A brief transcript of the segment, which aired on June 11 on Starting Point at 8:07 a.m. EDT, is as follows:
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So there was a question they polled with this
question. Did the stimulus help lower unemployment and 80 percent said
"yes," "no" said 4 percent, and "uncertain" said 2 percent. These are 42
economic experts who were polled of this. So, is the takeaway from
this, the stimulus worked, so there should be another stimulus? That
would be another solution for the crisis that we're in right now, or the
slowly improving crisis that we're in right now. What do you think?
STEPHANIE CUTTER, Obama deputy campaign manager: Well, I think those
economists said that the stimulus worked in stemming off the economic
downturn. The economic downturn, according to those economists, was much
worse than anybody predicted in the fall of 2008. But what the stimulus
did is it protected us from going off that cliff. It protected us from
falling into a depression and actually resulted in saving and creating
more than 3 million jobs.
But we need to do more. That's the message that the President was
communicating on Friday. That we need to do more. We need to keep our
foot on the pedal of this economy and continue doing things to help it
grow rather than putting up roadblocks.
And that's the debate I think that we're going to have on the campaign
trail. How do we grow this economy? President has solutions out there
that would jump start our economy now, put people back to work. It's
actually, according to independent economists, a million jobs that are
sitting on the table in Congress if they would just move on those
proposals.
O'BRIEN: Stephanie –
CUTTER: But unfortunately, we need some people to put the country ahead
of politics, to move those proposals forward and so far House
Republicans haven't been willing to do that.
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center
