Thanks to the Recovery Act, we're afloat by Congressman Jim Oberstar Appearing in Minneapolis Star-Tribune on 2009-09-15. Over the past summer I have toured Minnesota, observing how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been putting people to work. Projects are underway across Minnesota, and just six months into this two-year program, I am seeing positive results. In a Sept. 10 opinion piece, Tom Steward asked: "Where are the jobs promised by the stimulus?" As a political operative for GOP presidential candidate John McCain, and now as a researcher for a conservative think tank, Steward probably doesn't get out much. If he did, he would see people across Minnesota either going to work or staying at work because Congress and President Obama took quick action. Steward focuses on the numbers of jobs the Recovery Act promised to create when it was passed last February, claiming that the law is not working because the two-year program's job-creation numbers have not yet peaked, an event that is not expected to occur until next year. Projecting the number of jobs that will be created or saved is an imprecise science at best. But now that bids are being let and projects are underway, the Minnesota Department of Transportation can demonstrate that 2,900 jobs have been created so far. MnDOT projects that a total of 12,000 jobs will be created by the Recovery Act by the end of next year, a success by any definition. Those numbers cover only the highway-funding portion of the Recovery Act. An analysis by the White House estimates that as many as 66,000 jobs could be created in Minnesota by the end of next year. Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Economy.com and the top economic adviser for the McCain campaign, completed an analysis that projects 91,000 Minnesota jobs, holding the state's unemployment rate down by a full percentage point in the next year. The people of Minnesota did not send me to Washington to sit idly by and watch them lose their jobs during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. At the beginning of this year, the economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month, foreclosures were at record levels and our economy had a negative growth rate of 6.3 percent. Americans expected their leaders to take action, to minimize the impact of the recession on their lives and create the conditions for the fastest recovery possible. The Recovery Act is doing that. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Recovery Act slowed the rate of economic decline in the second quarter of this year to just 1 percent. A growth rate of 3.3 percent is expected in the third quarter. Without the boost from the Recovery Act, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius says that third-quarter growth would be zero. In northeast Minnesota, we are seeing the taconite industry begin to recover as plants open idled production lines. Activity in the steel industry is one of the surest signs of positive economic growth. The Recovery Act will continue creating jobs until the end of 2010, giving working families tax credits, helping first-time homebuyers, and investing in vital infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools and clean energy. It is easy for Steward and his fellow partisan naysayers to stand on the sidelines and criticize. However, I am staying focused on positive solutions that help working families and will restore prosperity to our economy. Jim Oberstar, a Democrat, represents Minnesota's Eighth District in the U.S. House.

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