There is much debate about whether or not the economic stimulus passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2009, has been successful. So just for a moment, imagine you had to explain the economic stimulus to a child.

Child: Hey Dad, I need your help. I’m supposed to write a paper for school about the economy. First, I need to know, what’s the stimulus package and why was it such a huge failure?

Dad: Well, the stimulus was a package of laws intended to help the country recover from the worst economic recession in over 80 years. The government spent money on college and job training, infrastructure projects like highways, railroads and airports to put people to work, and loaned money to the car industry to save hundreds of thousands of jobs. That included tax cuts so people can buy more consumer goods and to enable businesses to hire more people.

Child: Did any of it work? Did it even help the car industry?

Dad: Well, the car manufacturers had some of the best sales in years. They hired back a lot of employees and paid back the loans to the government.

Child: OK, so why was the stimulus was a failure?

Dad: Because it was hoped unemployment wouldn’t get above 8% and it’s around 9 percent now which is pretty high and a lot of people are still unemployed.

Child: What was the unemployment rate when the stimulus was passed?

Dad: In February, 2009, when the stimulus was passed, unemployment was at 8.2 percent.

Child: So you’re telling me the stimulus was a failure because it didn’t keep unemployment below 8% even though unemployment was already at 8.2% when the bill was signed during Obama’s first month in office.

Dad: Yep. Next question.

Child: Ok. How did Obama create this mess in the first place? How did the recession start?

Dad: The recession actually started in early 2008.

Child: You mean Obama’s policies were so bad that he retroactively started a recession a full year before he became president?

Dad: Exactly. In 2008, President Bush even tried to stop the Obama recession by passing his own economic stimulus which cost around $170 billion.

Child: Well that probably helped a little, didn’t it? What happened after that?

Dad: Unemployment increased from 5% to 8% before Bush left office. The finance and banking industries collapsed in September of 2008 which required hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out. When Bush left office, 750,000 people were losing their jobs per month and we appeared to be on the verge of another Great Depression with 20% unemployment.

Child: Wow, 750,000 jobs lost a month! So how much worse did it get after Obama passed his stimulus bill?

Dad: After the stimulus was passed, the number of people losing their jobs declined each month until we started adding jobs again by the end of the year. Then in 2010, new jobs were added every month, sometimes as many as 200,000 in a month.