Obama Signs Economy Recovery Stimulus Bill into Law

President Obama on Tuesday signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law.Obama said it does mark the beginning of the end – the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs and to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills and to set our economy on a firmer foundation.

Indeed, even though debate over the legislation was fraught with partisan fighting and what some characterize as strategic missteps by the nascent administration, getting the law passed was the easy part.

The first step is to stem the recession in the near term. In the longer term it will be to put the economy on a path to sustained growth and greater efficiencies in energy production, health care and other areas.

Obama told that Businesses start seeing that consumers are out there with a little more confidence, and they start making investments, which means they start hiring workers. So step number one, job creation.The official benchmark estimates from the White House is that 3.5 million jobs will be created or saved over the next two years, and over 90% of them will be in the private sector. But measuring the numbers of jobs saved as a result of the economic recovery package promises to be an elusive task.

Lakshman Achuthan, managing director the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said starting later this year he will look to what his group calls its Leading Employment Index as one gauge of stimulus effectiveness. The index is a composite of factors, including the number of initial jobless claims and hours in the average work week, as well as how many industries are adding jobs.

When consumers start to feel better about their personal situation and employment prospects, they pick up the pace of spending – that usually extends to the discretionary items as well.Ultimately it will still be hard to issue a final verdict on whether the package has worked because its success is dependent on the success of other recovery efforts, such as the program for stemming foreclosures that Obama is expected to lay out soon. A financial stability plan and a foreclosure mitigation plan must also be implemented.”