Murphy Supports Stimulus For Its Positive Impact On The Economy

Murphy Was Not In Congress When The Stimulus Was Passed. According to the Palm Beach Post: Murphy is “a first-time candidate who’s challenging nationally known Republican Rep. Allen West for a Martin-Palm Beach County seat.” [Palm Beach Post, 9/5/12]

Murphy Would Have Supported The Recovery Act To Avoid Economic Depression But Did Not Weigh In On Individual Elements. From an interview, cited in the Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition ad, that Murphy gave Palm Beach County NBC affiliate WPTV’s To The Point program:

MICHAEL WILLIAMS (HOST): Let’s talk specifics. President Obama’s stimulus program: Would you have voted for that?

MURPHY: Yes, I would have.

WILLIAMS: Why, when many argue in the Republican ranks that it has not achieved any of its goals? Unemployment’s still over 9 percent, the nation’s still mired in the tail end, or the back end of what was the great recession, as we’ve described it. Why vote for that stimulus program when others argue we would be better off with targeted tax cuts and the like?

MURPHY: This is something that economists are going to argue for a long time to come. And my opinion, and I think a lot of well-respected economists have pointed this out, we were really on the verge of depression. I mean, we were right there, and my opinion the stimulus helped keep us from going into a deep recession, and we’ve seen the economy start to come back. It’s not as quickly as I’d hoped for, but I think in part the stimulus has certainly helped put us in a position to recover. [WPTV’s To The Point, 6/12/11]

Recovery Act Created Millions Of Jobs, Boosted GDP, And Cut Taxes

Recovery Act “Succeeded In…Protecting The Economy During The Worst Of The Recession.” From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased the number of people employed by between 200,000 and 1.5 million jobs in March. In other words, between 200,000 and 1.5 million people employed in March owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. […] ARRA succeeded in its primary goal of protecting the economy during the worst of the recession. The CBO report finds that ARRA’s impact on jobs peaked in the third quarter of 2010, when up to 3.6 million people owed their jobs to the Recovery Act. Since then, the Act’s job impact has gradually declined as the economy recovers and certain provisions expire.” [CBPP.org, 5/29/12]

At Its Peak, Recovery Act Was Responsible For Up To 3.6 Million Jobs. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office:

CBO estimates that ARRAs [sic] policies had the following effects in the third quarter of calendar year 2010:

• They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent,
• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.8 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points,
• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.6 million, and
• Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2.0 million to 5.2 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers). [CBO.gov, 11/24/10]

Recovery Act Included $288 Billion In Tax Cuts. From PolitiFact: “Nearly a third of the cost of the stimulus, $288 billion, comes via tax breaks to individuals and businesses. The tax cuts include a refundable credit of up to $400 per individual and $800 for married couples; a temporary increase of the earned income tax credit for disadvantaged families; and an extension of a program that allows businesses to recover the costs of capital expenditures faster than usual. The tax cuts aren’t so much spending as money the government won’t get — so it can stay in the economy.” [PolitiFact.com, 2/17/10]

China Got “Zero” Of The Dollars Treasure Coast Refers To

Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition cites an ABC News article from 2010 to back up the claim that Patrick Murphy “supported using taxpayer money to create jobs in China.”

ABC/Investigative Reporting Workshop Claimed 79 Percent Of Stimulus Wind Energy Program Money Went To Foreign Companies. From the ABC News article cited by Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition: “The program has already spent $2 billion, funding enough projects to power 2.4 million homes. Any wind farm created in the U.S. is eligible for stimulus money to put up wind turbines, regardless of where those massive structures are made. Each turbine costs about $3 million, and reaches 40 stories into the sky. An investigation by ABC News and the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 79 percent of the program’s money has gone to foreign companies, money that Schumer said was ‘federal tax dollars, the stimulus, which was sold as jobs in America.’” [ABCNews.Go.com, 3/4/10]

• Private Wind Project Financier: Jobs Created By Turbine Project Intended For Americans. From the ABC News article cited by Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition: “The company that is helping to finance the wind project, US-REG, issued a statement Wednesday saying that the majority of jobs created by the project will be for Americans. ‘A minimum of 70 percent of each wind turbine […] will be wholly manufactured in the United States and made entirely of American steel. It is incorrect to assume that the hundreds of additional jobs created aside from the direct construction and operation of the Texas plant would be outside the U.S.,’ said Cappy McGarr, managing partner for the U.S. Renewable Energy Group.” [ABCNews.Go.com, 3/4/10]

PolitiFact: Because Project Treasure Coast Cited Was Never Completed, China Got No Stimulus Money For It. From PolitiFact: “ABC News and American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop reported in early 2010 that of $2 billion in stimulus money for building renewable energy projects such as a giant wind-energy farm, 80 percent went to foreign companies, including Chinese. […] The story would have been accurate but for one thing: The wind project with the Chinese connection never got completed. Since companies could only collect money after completion and the program expired last year, it is safe to say that the amount that went to China was ‘zero,’ Russ Choma, the reporter who performed the digging at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, told us.” [PolitiFact.com, 3/1/12]

American Wind Energy Jobs Created By Stimulus Funds. From PolitiFact: “Energy Secretary Steven Chu and the American Wind Energy Association also weighed in on Choma’s story. Their point: Wind energy projects supported with stimulus dollars create and save American jobs. On Facebook, Chu wrote that, ‘Every dollar awarded through this program helps put Americans to work. … All of the wind turbine installation jobs are created here in America.’ Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, credits the stimulus bill with saving and creating 40,000 jobs; at the start of 2009, her organization expected that wind power development might drop as much as 50 percent from 2008 levels. Midyear, the trend turned around, she said. Most of those 40,000 jobs are in the construction sector; jobs in the manufacturing sector fell last year. That said, the American Wind Energy Association estimates that more than 50 percent of turbine parts, such as towers, blades, nacelle assembly, and some internal components are made in the United States, a number that is growing. Clearly, jobs are being created and saved in the United States as a result of these projects.” [PolitiFact.com, 2/23/10]

Stimulus Gave A Grant To NSF, Not To “Exotic Ant Research”

Stimulus Didn’t Directly Fund Ant Research – It Funded National Science Foundation. According to PolitiFact: “The federal stimulus gave $3 billion to the National Science Foundation, which otherwise had a budget of about $6.5 billion in 2009, according to the foundation’s Website. The foundation is distributing the money using the same peer-review process with which it normally decides on which research to fund. As it turns out, one scientist’s study on ants of the Southwest Indian Ocean and East Africa made the cut. PolitiFact Oregon caught up with Brian Fisher, the project’s leader and curator of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, to pick his brain about the recent political celebrity of ants. […] While ant research might not seem like an obvious target for government funds, Fisher provides a logical defense. Ants, Fisher says, offer insight into climate change, the spread of disease and natural disasters. ‘You can’t monitor every single living thing, (but) there are key groups that can serve as indicators for other taxa, ants being one of them,’ he said. ‘Without them, we wouldn’t have a functioning ecosystem.’ It’s also worth noting that the project has so far helped employ 16 people, at Fisher’s last count.” [PolitiFact.com, 9/17/10]