White House credits stimulus with up to 2M jobs

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is trumpeting a new White House estimate that his top economist calls "stunning": His stimulus plan has already created or saved up to 2 million jobs.

The analysis is part of the administration's quarterly report to Congress on the controversial $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts he signed weeks after taking office.

Republicans have denounced the stimulus plan as an expensive flop, pointing to a national unemployment rate stuck at 10 percent and December figures showing the economy shed 85,000 more jobs.

But the report from the President's Council of Economic Advisers said the economy is a lot better off than it would have been without the stimulus. Citing its own analysis plus a range of private sector summaries, the council estimated the annual growth rate last year would have been roughly 2 percentage points lower, and there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs.

"That's truly a stunning and important effect", Christina Romer, the council's chairwoman, said in a conference call with reporters. "It has done exactly what we have anticipated it would do."

The report also said over half the stimulus plan's cash and tax breaks have now been spent or otherwise committed. Critics warned the cash would arrive too late to do much good.

Obama had planned to highlight the report during a visit to a Lanham, Md., training center for union electricians, but he canceled the stop as the White House scrambled to respond to Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

On Friday, when the December jobs report was issued, Obama acknowledged a setback.

"The road to recovery is never straight," he told reporters. "We have to work every single day to get our economy moving again."

The president's visit to the training facility in the Washington suburbs was to be part of a renewed focus on jobs ahead of his State of the Union speech.

While defending the stimulus plan and its impact, Obama has sought to build support for fresh job-creation measures, including tax breaks for hiring, additional public works spending and incentives for weatherizing homes — the so-called Cash for Caulkers program.

Some of these are in the $75 billion Jobs for Main Street Act that the House has already passed. The Senate is expected to take it up soon.