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US vice president says stimulus plan is working

Updated: 2009-09-04 00:48

WASHINGTON:Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that the Obama administration's sweeping and very expensive stimulus effort "is in fact working" despite steady Republican criticism and public skepticism.

Nearly 200 days into the stimulus, a $787 billion rescue effort that President Barack Obama pushed through Congress, Biden delivered an upbeat report card. He quoted estimates by private analysts that the plan has created or saved 500,000 to 750,000 jobs so far, although millions of people remain out of work.

Biden said, "Instead of talking about the beginning of a depression, we are talking about the end of a recession."

The vice president's speech at the Brookings Institution precedes a speech to Congress by Obama scheduled for Wednesday night to sell his plan to refashion the U.S. health care system.

In recent weeks controversy over that plan has served to pull attention from the stimulus package. Republicans and conservatives have vilified the health project as creeping socialized medicine.

The effectiveness of the two-year stimulus program also is a matter of sharp political debate.

The White House is eager to promote signs of progress as the economy lumbers out of recession, and Biden sought to counter critics with a listing of tangible results.

The stimulus package is a mix of tax cuts, increased spending on Medicaid, a government-run medical program primarily for the poor, and huge investments in infrastructure, education, energy projects and more.

Many economists warn that the unemployment rate will keep rising until at least next midyear 2010, and it is that measure _ the loss or creation of jobs _ by which many Americans decide whether economic life is getting better.

Obama's Council of Economic Advisers will give an updated projection next Thursday of the number of jobs created or saved because of the stimulus plan. Biden said he expected it will back up his predictions of 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days and another 600,000 formed or saved over the second 100 days of the act.

Biden warned that the recovery will be uneven but said so far, the recovery act is "doing more, faster, more efficiently, and more effectively than most expected."

The White House has acknowledged that its initial economic forecasts to sell the stimulus were too rosy. Many Republican leaders say the stimulus is not working nearly as well as the White House promotes, and at a huge cost in increased debt to the nation.

With Obama on vacation at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, the White House hopes Biden's message will break through.

A Gallup poll last month found 51 percent of Americans wished the government would have spent less to stimulate the economy. The same poll found 41 percent thought the stimulus package was helping the economy in the short term; 33 percent saw no effect, and 24 percent said it was making the economy worse.

The vice president's appearance is part of a concerted White House push before the 200th day of the stimulus act on Saturday. Five top administration officials were speaking about the law's benefits Thursday in appearances in Arkansas, Virginia, Illinois, California and Minnesota.

Public approval of Obama's performance and of his handling of the economy have slipped. Polls now put both figures slightly above 50 percent.