A Conservative's lie.

The BEA's current numbers clearly illustrate that the stimulus did have a substantial effect on GDP.  By technical standards, the rapid turnaround of GDP, should be considered breathtaking, even though jobs continued to slide.

To illustrate the relative effect on GDP, consider how rapidly GDP changed when George Bush and Republicans in full control of Congress and the White House, responded to a recession:

The first thing you notice, is that - obviously - the 2007-2009 Recession was extremely deep by comparison to the 2001-2002 Recession. But it's also worth noting, how long it took government to react to the 2007's start of the recession, before it enacted the first program, TARP.  (As some might note, George Bush and Republicans would deny that the economy was in recession, as early as January 2008, again in February 2008, and in March 2008, of course, April 2008, etc.)  But for all its faults, TARP really did prevent the Great Depression 2.0.  And for that matter, combined with ARRA, GDP rebounded harder than under Republicans' more immediate response in 3 months after the official start of the recession in 2001.

What's interesting to note, is that Bush's tax rebates of early 2008 did nothing to forestall the recession, and John McCain, even before he acknowledged that a recession existed, had called for cutting government spending.  But as we all know by now, those two Republican tax cuts (2001, 2003) and tax rebates (2008) only ended up growing debt faster than GDP, permanently adjusting the debt to GDP ratio each time.