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Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from October 2012 through December 2012 1 (February 2013)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo10991 and id is 1 raw text is: FEBRUARY 2013
Estimated Impact of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on
Employment and Economic Output from
October 2012 Through December 2012

In February 2009, in response to significant weakness in
the economy, lawmakers enacted the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The legislation's numer-
ous spending and revenue provisions can be grouped into
several categories according to their focus:
 Providing funds to states and localities-for example,
by raising federal matching rates under Medicaid, pro-
viding aid for education, and increasing financial sup-
port for some transportation projects;
 Supporting people in need-such as by extending and
expanding unemployment benefits and increasing
benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (formerly the Food Stamp program);
 Purchasing goods and services-for instance, by fund-
ing construction and other investment activities that
could take several years to complete; and
 Providing temporary tax relief for individuals and
businesses-such as by raising exemption amounts for
the alternative minimum tax, adding a new Making
Work Pay tax credit, and creating enhanced deduc-
tions for depreciation of business equipment.
When ARRA was being considered, the Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Commit-
tee on Taxation estimated that it would increase budget
deficits by $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and
2019. CBO now estimates that the total impact over the
2009-2019 period will amount to about $830 billion. By
CBO's estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in

fiscal year 2010, and more than 90 percent of ARRAs
budgetary impact was realized by the end of December
2012.
Various recipients of ARRA funds (most recipients of
grants and loans, contractors, and subcontractors) are
required to report, after the end of each calendar quarter,
the number of jobs funded through ARRA. The law also
requires CBO to comment on those reported numbers.
During the fourth quarter of calendar year 2012, recipi-
ents reported, ARRA funded more than 113,000 full-
time-equivalent (FTE) jobs.2 Those reports, however, do
not provide a comprehensive estimate of the law's impact
on U.S. employment, which could be higher or lower
than the number of FTE jobs reported, for several reasons
(in addition to any issues concerning the quality of the
1. Public Law 111-5, sections 1512(c) and 1512(e); 123 Stat. 115,
288. Public Law 112-204, enacted on December 4, 2012,
changed CBO's reporting requirements; the agency's reports on
ARRA will now be prepared annually, rather than quarterly. This
report is the 14th in CBO's series of quarterly reports. For the pre-
vious report, see Congressional Budget Office, EstimatedImpact of
the American Recovery and InvestnuitAct on Emqloyment and
conomic Outputfromful )20.12 Trough September 2012
(November 2012).
2. Data compiled from recipients' reports (on jobs funded and other
information) are shown at wwwrecovery go. Recipients were
asked to calculate FTEs by taking the total number of hours
worked in a quarter that were funded by ARRA and dividing the
total by the number of hours that a full-time employee would
have worked in that quarter.

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