Economic stimulus has created or saved nearly 2 million jobs, White House says

The $787 billion economic stimulus package has created or saved between 1.7 million and 2 million jobs, but its impact on the economy ebbed slightly in the final quarter of 2009 compared with prior months, the White House said Tuesday night.

Releasing the administration's second quarterly report to Congress on the stimulus's impact, Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said a third of the tax cuts and spending in the package is out the door. Her office estimates that the stimulus added between 1.5 and 3 percentage points to the growth in gross domestic product in the final quarter of 2009. That estimate, which is in line with other analyses, is lower than her office's estimate of stimulus-related impact in the third quarter, between 3 and 4 percentage points. Administration officials said often last year that the stimulus's impact would be felt more over time as spending ramped up, but Romer said in a conference call with reporters that the drop-off in GDP impact was not unexpected. The biggest jolt to the GDP came with the first big surge of spending over the summer, she said, and job creation is now following.