Where The Money Went
Paul Krugman
New York Times’ Blog
July 10, 2011, 2:54 pm
Somehow I missed the BEA’s very useful page tracking the Recovery Act and how it is translated into taxes and spending. (Thanks to the commenter who mentioned it). It’s especially useful for thinking about what the Obama stimulus really involved — and what it didn’t.
Look at the peak quarter of stimulus (pdf), which was the first quarter of 2010. I’m going to rearrange the categories a bit. Here’s how I read it: at annual rates (in other words, actual numbers in the quarter were only 1/4 as large), the total budget impact was $357 billion. Of that, we had:
Tax cuts and refundable tax credits: $151 billion
Aid to individuals (mainly unemployment insurance and food stamps): $70 billion
Aid to state and local governments: $103 billion
Everything else: $33 billion
…
So much for “we tried Keynesian policies and they didn’t work.”