The Economic Stimulus: Bonus or Bogus?

Job seekers wait in line before entering a job fair held by the California Employment Development...

Job seekers wait in line before entering a job fair held by the California Employment Development Department and the San Francisco Veterans Employment Committee in San Francisco, California in this May 2010 file photo. It?s been over a year and a half since the President and Congress pumped $787 billion dollars into the struggling economy and perhaps no single issue has been subject to more disinformation than the President's economic stimulus program.

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Stimulating Debate: White House, Republicans Differ on Stimulus

Economists differ on how many jobs were created -- the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts it somewhere between 1.4 and 3.3 million -- but none say it cost jobs.

Republicans don't have the monopoly on bogus claims about the stimulus.

Chief stimulus cheerleader Vice President Joe Biden – who declared in June the beginning of "recovery summer" – has been prone to irrational exuberance when it comes to claims about what the stimulus has achieved.

Last September, Biden said of the stimulus, "In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this well."

Actually, the Obama-Biden economic team put out a report in early 2009 saying the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate at no higher than 8 percent. With unemployment now at nearly 10 percent, that now seems like a wild dream.

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The most extravagant claim related to the stimulus came from Harry Reid when he told MSNBC last week, "But for me, we'd be in a worldwide depression."

Whatever the claims, the stimulus is viewed unfavorably by the majority of voters.

A recent ABC News poll showed 90 percent of likely voters say the economy is in bad shape, perhaps an indication why the Obama administration's economic stimulus gets so little applause: By more than two-to-one, 68 percent to 29 percent, Americans are far more apt to say that money was wasted rather than well-spent.

The bottom line: The stimulus did create some jobs, though not enough to bring down the unemployment rate or to convince voters it is working. One thing the stimulus definitely did create, however, was a boatload of bogus claims.

Gregory Simmons and Avery Miller contributed to this report..