February l7, 2010 was the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the Stimulus Plan. The president and Democratic leaders spoke that day of accomplishments. His Republican critics spoke of failures. What are the facts? And what is the fiction?

To gain some perspective, let’s think back to February l7, 2009 and the state of the nation. The new administration, only in office for one month, inherited an economic free-fall and recession that had begun in September 2008. President Obama had been elected with 365 electoral votes, twice the number of his rival, John McCain. The Democratic Congress had strong majorities in both houses. Barack Obama and his economic advisors had been developing plans to counter the economic woes during the five months before he was inaugurated. They knew from the advice of the country’s leading economists that the federal government had to spend dollars to combat the recession. It was far beyond fixing itself as free-market theorists proposed. The specter of The Great Depression of the l930s loomed ahead.

Within weeks, the Democratic Senate and House created the $787 billion stimulus plan, passed with no Republican votes in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. Some economists argued that it didn’t provide enough dollars to confront the serious crisis across the country. There were three main parts to the plan that would take effect over a ten-year period, with most budgeted for the first three years.

• $288 in tax cuts and rebates to individuals and small business.

• $224 billion in extended unemployment benefits, education and health care administered through the states.

• $275 billion for job creation using federal contracts, grants and loans. This would include infrastructure projects and public works.

How was the Stimulus Plan to Work? Workers would receive tax rebates in their checks and small business owners would receive tax cuts. The extra money was meant to encourage consumer spending and help owners create jobs. Dollars to the states were aimed at extending income to families already living on unemployment benefits, as well as retaining teachers, police and fire fighters in their jobs. The billions for infrastructure and public works targeted creation or retention of 3 million jobs.

A year later, we can look at what has happened so far. At the outset, certain southern Republican governors said they didn’t want the money for extended unemployment, education and health care. They rejected “federal control” over their states and citizens. When their citizens reacted with outrage, the governors backed down. In contrast, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican governor of California, was a strong supporter as were Democratic governors across the country. A year later, with unemployment still hovering at just under l0 percent, President Obama appeared at the White House on the first-year anniversary and said that the stimulus had created or saved as many as two million jobs, lowered taxes for 95 percent of Americans and saved the nation from another Great Depression.

He acknowledged that there was widespread disagreement about what the stimulus plan had accomplished. “If we’re honest, part of the controversy also is that despite the extraordinary work that has been done through the Recovery Act, millions of Americans are still without jobs. Millions more are struggling to make ends meet. So it doesn’t feel like much of a recovery yet. I understand that.” Most economists agree that the jobless rate is the last economic index to rebound, but they add that it would be even higher without the stimulus.

Outside evaluators of the stimulus are economic research firms, Macroeconomic Advisers, Global Insight and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the stimulus has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs at this point and it will reach about 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, says that these estimates are conservative. Governors disagree about the benefits of the stimulus in their states. Governor Tim Pawlenty, Republican of Minnesota, said on “Meet the Press” that it was largely “a waste of money that is now sustaining government at a time when we need to be shrinking government.” Three Democratic governors, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania and James Doyle of Wisconsin, have said the money from the stimulus had been “a godsend.” Governor Rendell said, “We could fill every baseball stadium in the country with people who got jobs or whose jobs were saved by the stimulus.” Governor Schwarznegger agreed with them. “I have been the first of the Republican governors to come out to support the stimulus money. I say to myself, this is terrific, and anyone that says that it hasn’t created jobs, they should talk to the 150,000 people who have been getting jobs in California.”

A particular bone of contention is whether the stimulus has widened the budget deficit. Today’s deficits are rooted largely in the eight years of spending billions of dollars for two wars that were not included in the annual budgets of President George Bush – while he lowered taxes on the richest Americans. Thus, as less money came in, billions went out, driving up the deficits. An ironic footnote about the critics of the stimulus plan was published in The Wall Street Journal which cited more than a dozen Republican lawmakers who wrote letters to federal agencies asking that stimulus money be awarded for jobcreating projects in their home districts. President Obama spoke to that point at the White House on February l7 when he said, “There are those, let’s face it, across the aisle who have tried to score political points by attacking what we did – even as many of them show up at ribboncutting ceremonies for projects in their districts.” As always, a president has the bully-pulpit to have the last word on a subject.

Joyce S. Anderson is the author of “Courage in High Heels,” “Flaw in the Tapestry,” “If Winter Comes” and “The Mermaids Singing.” She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.