From Bloomberg:
President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Indeed, while the economists surveyed are not in agreement on how many jobs and how much growth will be produced, they are in agreement that it will do both. Moody’s Analytics estimated that the plan would boost economic growth by 2 percentage points and create 2 million jobs. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated the plan would add 1.5 percent growth to the economy, Macroeconomic Advisers LLC said 1.3 percent and UniCredit Research, up to 2 percent.
So if you pass the President’s plan, you avert a recession. If you don’t, you are responsible for it. And if you pass the Republican plan, which includes severe cuts in government spending, the end of the payroll- tax holiday and an expiration of extended unemployment benefits, you would actually cause a recession by those actions alone. JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli estimates that those actions would would cut GDP by 1.7 percent in 2012.