While selling his economic stimulus legislation to the American people in January 2009, then President-Elect Obama and his advisors released a report predicting the effects of the legislation. The original chart (updated below) can be found here on page four. As you can see, Obama sold the stimulus based on an estimate that America would enjoy a roughly 5.8% unemployment rate by the 2nd quarter of 2012.
Today’s unemployment rate is 8.2% — nearly 2.5 percentage points higher than Obama’s promise.
