Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) pushed back on Vice President Joe Biden’s claim on Wednesday at an event held in Granite City, Ill., that stimulus spending bolstered infrastructure in Illinois and across the country.
Biden said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which injected approximately $800 billion into the economy, helped reverse the worst recession in decades and funded infrastructure projects like the expansion of America’s Central Port harbor.
Shimkus countered that the stimulus package included a lot of wasteful spending and funded bankrupt companies at the expense of taxpayers.
“While I support the efforts to expand and grow America’s Central Port, the stimulus as a whole was a failure,” Shimkus said. “The fact is the stimulus included very little infrastructure spending, so touting infrastructure improvements hardly tells the full story of the stimulus.”
The unemployment rate in Illinois also hasn’t improved much from February 2009 to December 2013, Shimkus said, moving from 8.5 percent to 8.6 percent over that span.
“According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, each job created cost somewhere between $98,810 and $488,235,” Shimkus said. “The worst part is that the long-term costs of the stimulus will actually reduce our nation’s gross domestic product.”
Biden said stimulus spending created or saved 6 million jobs and gave him optimism about America’s future.