As White House officials mobilized to tout new data as evidence of economic growth, Vice President Joe Biden suggested Sunday the country had hit rock botton.



Although the vice president noted stimulus dollars had created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs this year, Biden stressed it was still a "depression for millions of people" who are struggling to find any work at all.



"Oh, I'm confident we've hit bottom," Biden said in a pre-recorded interview aired on CNN's "State of the Union." "The question -- look, we're not going to be satisfied... until we -- I'm able to sit in front of you and say, look, this month we grew jobs. The net effect is growing jobs."



"It doesn't say a lot to people to say, you know, there would have been a million more, or a 1.6 million more jobs lost, but for this," he added. "My grandpop used to have an expression... He said, when a guy in Dixon City, a suburb, is out of work, it's an economic slowdown; when your brother-in-law is out of work, it's a recession; when you're out of work, it's a depression."

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Intentionally or not, Biden's comments this weekend illustrate a serious, intense debate in Washington over the effect of federal rescue dollars. On one hand, the Obama administration insists this year's 3.5 percent GDP growth, announced last week, would have been impossible unless the government stepped in to prevent a bigger economic meltdown. However, the White House's critics, mostly Republicans, have routinely charged the stimulus is not doing enough, especially in the realm of job creation.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) echoed that argument on Sunday. Appearing after Biden's taped interview, he told host John King that he was not sure whether the country has hit rock bottom, and he stressed the stimulus was without a model for determining how many jobs had been saved or created.



"All I know are the facts. The president said that when he signed the bill that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. Now we have unemployment nearly 10 percent," he said.

"Three million Americans have lost their jobs since the stimulus was signed into law. And yes, the economy grew last month," he added. "But Americans all around the country continue to ask the question, where are the jobs?"



