With its investments into infrastructure projects, tax cuts, and aid to states, the stimulus was designed to curb the effects of the recession and turn the economy back around. Though Republicans have criticized the effort and subsequent attempts to stimulate the economy as “failed policies,” early analysis has shown that the stimulus saved and created millions of jobs and pulled the American economy away from the precipice of collapse.

In a new analysis, Center for American Progress Director for Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden examined the American economy in three parts — before the recession, during the recession, and after the stimulus passed — to find out if the stimulus did, indeed, work. As the video below shows, there is no doubt that the stimulus turned the economy around and put it on the path to recovery:

GINGRICH: There are two good things from the standpoint of health. The first is, a very serious investment in health information technology, which takes us a significant step down the road toward really having electronic health records for every American and I applaud President Obama for developing and insisting on that approach. And second, a substantial amount of money for Medicaid, which will in fact help the states this year, at least in the short term period, to be able to pay their bills and to help hospitals and doctors who otherwise would face very severe cuts.

Watch it:

Gingrich now rarely mentions these provisions as he campaigns for the presidency in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and instead condemns both the stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act in the broadest possible strokes, trying to obscure the fact that he has advocated for some of the very same provisions that President Obama has signed into law.

However, if Mitt Romney had been president in 2008, according to a campaign spokesman, he wouldn’t have passed the Recovery Act. Instead, he would have cut taxes for corporations and extended the Bush tax cuts, as well as opening up land for oil drilling:

Asked what President Romney would have done during his first days in office, in lieu of a federal stimulus, to address the market meltdown, Chen rattled off a few likely options: “Lowering the corporate tax rate. Enacting a permanent extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Immediately ratifying our pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. In the energy sector, freeing up the necessary land to enable greater domestic production.” He did not make clear how Romney would have steered these boilerplate conservative proposals through a Democrat-controlled Congress.

According to the CBO, extending income tax cuts and cutting the corporate tax rate are two of the least effective strategies for boosting economic growth and employment. For extending income tax cuts, only 10 cents to 60 cents in economic activity is created for every dollar spent. It’s at most 30 cents in economic activity for every dollar spent on corporate tax cuts.

Meanwhile, steps that put money directly into the pockets of low- and middle-income families or directly create jobs, like cutting payroll taxes or spending on infrastructure, have far higher bang-for-the-buck. These are the sorts of policies that President Obama has proposed in his American Jobs Act, but that Republicans have filibustered over and over.

It was the slew of tax cuts that were added to the stimulus in a misguided attempt to win Republican votes that watered down its effectiveness in the first place. If Romney had been running the show, that ratio would have evidently been even worse. Of course, considering that Romney’s economic plan consists of nearly $7 trillion in tax cuts that overwhelmingly go to the rich and corporations, perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Thompson has been a critic of the Recovery Act, saying that he was “disturbed” with the direction of the country following the stimulus vote, and his advisers highlighting it as an example of “runaway government spending.” But as it turns out, Thompson decided to kick off his campaign at a company that has benefited from stimulus dollars:

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson hasn’t been afraid to attack others for backing President Barack Obama’s controversial stimulus package. [...] So isn’t it odd that Thompson is officially launching his bid for the U.S. Senate today at a company that directly benefited from the Recovery Act?

Federal records show Weldall Manufacturing in Waukesha was awarded $300,000 in stimulus dollars in October 2010 under an energy project overseen by the state Department of Administration. Here are the project specifics.

The funding created about 100 jobs at the company. Not only did the Recovery Act help at that company, but it also went to aid several companies with which Thompson is involved. In fact, “Logistics Health of La Crosse – of which Thompson is the president – got $277,000 stimulus dollars for 3 contracts.”

Thompson explained that he was unaware that the company at which he made his announcement had received Recovery Act funding, but that “it was a good thing if it created jobs.”

Due to the success of the Treasury Grant Program, the U.S. will account for 85% of installations in the North American market. American installations could potentially reach 1.9 GW by the end of December — again doubling year-over-year installations.

Much of the activity in the last two quarters has been spurred by companies rushing to qualify for the Grant Program, an incentive through the Treasury that provides a cash payment worth 30% of a project’s cost. The program, which was created as part of the Stimulus package and is set to expire at the end of December, has been a resounding success.

The solar industry still has an investment tax credit in place through 2016. However, with many financiers unable to take full advantage of tax credits, some analysts expect the market to shrink. In an effort to keep the momentum strong, a coalition of 763 companies and organizations in the solar industry issued a letter to Congress yesterday urging political leaders not to let this crucial program expire. According to the coalition, available finance would be more than 50% less than it is today under the grant:

The 1603 Treasury Program has been a resounding success. Since its enactment, the program has leveraged over $22.8 billion in private sector investment to support over 22,000 projects utilizing a wide range of energy technologies in all 50 states. This has resulted in thousands of new American jobs.

The 1603 Treasury Program is an efficient finance mechanism that allows taxpayers and small businesses to maximize the return and value of existing energy tax incentives, and is technology neutral so it encourages the development of a wide variety of domestic energy technologies. Lastly, there remains a need for the 1603 Treasury Program. The tax equity market modestly improved in 2010, but still has not recovered to pre-recession activity. A July 2011 survey of the major tax equity investors by the U.S. Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance estimates expiration of the program would shrink the total financing available for energy projects by 52 percent in 2012. This would stifle job creation and severely restrict the market’s ability to leverage private sector capital to finance new domestic energy projects.

According to a recent report from EuPD Researched and commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association, an extension of the grant program could create as many as 37,000 direct and indirect jobs, while supporting 2 GW of additional solar installations through 2016.

As Europe continues its slide, the effects are sure to be felt in the United States, where the threat of a recession in 2012 is now greater than 50 percent. “It is not something that we would be insulated from,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week. “I don’t think we would be able to escape the consequences of a blow-up in Europe.”

But even with evidence that austerity is wreaking havoc on European economies, American policymakers remain intent on following that lead. But chasing Europe down the austerity hole is only ensuring that the U.S. will experience another “great recession,” according to economists surveyed by Politico:

“To engage in austerity right now would be a great mistake,” insisted Desmond Lachman, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It would push the economy into a great recession.” [...]

“We need to learn from the European recessions,” said David Walker, former comptroller general of the United States, “and structure our own program” accordingly. He, too, said he considers large, near-term budget cuts potentially disastrous. Walker and other experts said significant budget cuts are certainly necessary — eventually. But not now. [...]

“Austerity brings a cyclical contraction,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a German who is senior director for strategy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington. “You can’t just slash. You also have to invest and reform.” In his view, U.S. politicians don’t seem to appreciate this because they hold “a dangerous philosophy of American exceptionalism, as if they were exempt from the rules of finance.”

Despite these warnings, congressional leaders — particularly on the right — continue to push for massive spending cuts to a variety of programs, while opposing economic stimulus that could spark growth and recovery. The House will vote this week on a radical Balanced Budget Amendment that would force bigger spending cuts than even the fiscal super committee could ever dream of, drive up the unemployment rate, and ensure that future recessions will be even more painful.

The GOP, along with some moderate Democrats, has opposed the American Jobs Act, which would inject money into the economy in the form of infrastructure investment, aid to states to hire teachers and public safety officials, and other measures designed for job creation. Instead, they have focused on anti-regulatory, anti-spending policies that have little (if any) effect on job creation.

As these economists noted, clear evidence exists across the pond that widespread austerity measures will only stunt economic growth and push the U.S. closer to the brink of another recession. Unfortunately, Congressional leadership continues to ignore them.

(HT: Catherine Rampell)

Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) taking credit for a solar program funded by the stimulus and other Obama programs.

Bucking the trend, at least for a day, Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) participated in a publicity event on Monday to celebrate the success of a government-backed solar energy initiative. Gibson spoke at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany to announce a deal to keep 17 solar energy research jobs. The research center hopes to boost an effort to develop “thin-film” solar cells to be built in a 18,000-square-foot manufacturing facility near the campus. Speaking at the event, Gibson applauded the investment, but failed to credit how much of the money was authorized:

“Today’s announcement continues our region’s growth as the next place for 21st Century technology. This facility will preserve existing jobs and ensure that our area remains at the forefront of research into clean energy technologies that are so vital for our future. I applaud CNSE’s efforts to invest in our local communities and look forward to continuing to work with them to expand public-private partnerships here in Tech Valley.”

Earlier this year, the research center received a $5 million grant made possible in part by President Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus. During the election last year, Gibson made the stimulus a campaign issue and blasted his Democratic opponent for supporting such a “failed” policy.

The solar jobs are also made possible by the SunShot Initiative, a Department of Energy program started by the Obama administration to spur solar energy technological developments.

A recent ThinkProgress investigation found at least 60 Republicans writing letters to Secretary Steven Chu to request clean energy grants and loans for favored companies.

Aerial photo of site for Fisker Automotive facility in Delaware, made possible by a clean energy loan program

by Dave Roberts in a Grist cross-post

Here we go again.

ABC News and iWatch have a big new report out that desperately tries to lend an air of scandal to another Department of Energy loan guarantee. It’s a remarkable package, nearly 3,000 words and three ABC News segments full of handwaving and innuendo suggesting that there’s something shady going on, using the word “Solyndra” as often as possible, but in the end there’s … nothing. Not a single bit of evidence of wrongdoing or corruption. It’s a gigantic nothingburger. It just describes the loan program working exactly as it was intended to, but in a tone of dark insinuation.

The fact that there’s no there there will of course not impede the U.S. scandal machine. Already the Drudge Report has linked it, Sarah Palin has Tweeted it, right-wing blogs are flogging it … Next thing you know, other media will be hyping it to, because, you know, “questions have been raised.” And it’s off to the races all over again.

Just for the record, let’s walk through the facts.

The loan program in question is the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program, established in 2007 by the energy bill passed under George W. Bush. It’s intended to speed the introduction of more efficient vehicles into the U.S. market and help stand up domestic industries to supply those vehicles.

The ATVM program was fully funded in 2008 and began issuing loans in 2009. In June of that year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the first three recipients: $5.9 billion to Ford, $1.6 billion to Nissan, and $465 million to electric automaker Tesla.

Then, in September 2009, DOE announced a fourth recipient: $529 million to California-based Fisker Automotive. The loan was finalized in April 2010 and announced at an event with Vice President Joe Biden.

At the time, Fisker had one vehicle under development and another planned, both plug-in hybrids; the loan was split between them. The smaller portion, $169 million, was devoted to helping Fisker work with U.S. suppliers to finish up the Karma, a $97,000 four-door luxury sedan. The larger portion, $359 million, was devoted to Project Nina, Fisker’s plan to develop a mid-market plug-in sedan. The company expects the Nina to cost around $39,000 and be in mass production (75,000-100,000 a year) by late 2012, with delivery to begin in 2013.

Everything seems to be going roughly according to plan. Fisker hasn’t missed any loan payments or asked for any further loans. Some regulatory issues pushed the Karma production schedule back a bit, but the first few are on the road now and there are 3,000 pre-orders for more. In October 2009, Fisker purchased the Wilmington Assembly plant in Delaware, which was owned by General Motors from 1947 until it was shut down in July 2009, to manufacture its Nina. The DOE loan is being used, in part, to renovate and upgrade the plant. In June 2011, Fisker started its first round of hiring, bringing on 120 engineers, technicians, and production workers at the plant.

So far so good, right? Sounds like what the 2007 Congress envisioned and Obama promised: a boost for a promising new U.S. company; jobs in an industry that’s been hit hard by the downturn; groundwork put in place for what promises to be a huge growth market. Where’s the scandal?

Like I said, the ABC/iWatch story is filled with vague insinuations, but I’ll try to extract and address the main charges, such as they are.

1. This is a subsidy for rich people.

The Karma is extremely expensive — around $100,000. It is indeed a car for rich people; the very first one off the production line went to Leonardo DiCaprio. Al Gore’s in line for one too. Yes, DiCaprio and Gore; this is a field day for gossipy media.

However, some perspective is in order. A small start-up trying to break into an automotive market dominated by huge, well-established incumbents has to start at the high end. It doesn’t yet have economies of scale or mass production capabilities; it needs to prove that it can create a working, reliable car; and it just needs to attract attention. Tesla did the same thing for the same reason. It’s a way to attract more investment.

So in a sense, yes, all government assistance to electric vehicles (or batteries) is “a subsidy to rich people” for the moment, because cutting-edge new products are expensive. The whole point of the assistance is to drive the cost down and accelerate the introduction of the products to a larger mass market.

Tesla and Fisker are both starting with high-end models and then moving aggressively into lower cost mass-market models. And remember: The bulk of the loan to Fisker is to support the Nina.

2. The cars are made in Finland.

As founder Henrik Fisker said, “There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle. They don’t exist here.” So the Karma is being assembled at a plant in Finland.

ABC seems convinced that we should be outraged by this. Taxpayers lending money to a company building cars overseas! Scandal-ish!

But, again: The DOE loan is specifically earmarked for spending inside the U.S. None of it will be spent in Finland. And, again: Fisker is in the process of upgrading a plant in Delaware to manufacture its next car.

And finally, I don’t know about you, but when I hear that a U.S. electric-vehicle company can’t find a manufacturer in the U.S. capable of assembling its cars, my first thought is not, “Well, screw that company, let’s not help them!” It’s, “Criminy, we need to get started creating the industrial infrastructure to support a domestic electric-vehicle industry!”

3. Fisker is a risky bet.

The ABC story makes this point as though it’s exposing some dark secret. But of course it’s f’ing risky! That’s the whole point: to help companies on the cutting edge, companies trying to break into established markets and shake up the status quo. Those companies are, by definition, risky. That’s why Congress set aside $7.5 billion as a loan loss reserve.

And Fisker isn’t that risky. It’s attracted $650 million in private investment since the DOE loan went through. It’s got a car in production. It’s gearing up to produce another. (The Nina is by far the riskiest element of this, simply because it doesn’t exist yet, so no one knows if it will live up to its cost and range projections.) There is always the risk that gas prices will do one of their random plunges right when Fisker introduces its mass-market plug-in, but if that risk were going to scare investors away then there would never be an electric-vehicle market at all.

The administration is to be lauded for taking risks, not scolded. Let’s just hope the endless media scandalmongering doesn’t destroy political will to take chances.

4. Fisker investors are close with the Obama administration.

This is the tricky one. The fact is, the world of big-time cleantech investors is relatively small and the people who are part of it are more likely than the average bear to be Democrats. They believe in clean energy; they are experts in it and advocates for it; for obvious reasons, they raised money and voted for Obama. Many advised his campaign and some advise his administration.

It is therefore inevitable that if government supports cleantech, some of that support is going to go to companies run or funded by big Democratic players. This is part of what’s made it so easy for the media to cast a vague pall of suspicion over the loan programs.

ABC and iWatch did a story in March straining mightily to make hay out of this. But it’s worth reading that story closely. It lists a number of cleantech loan recipients with ties to the Democratic Party. But that’s all it does, in the end: list them. At no point does it establish that there was any improper political influence in the process of reviewing and granting loans. Of course it does the usual he-said she-said — Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns (Fla.) charges favoritism; the administration denies it — but at no point is there any actual evidence of favoritism. At all.

The best ABC and iWatch can come up with is that a rich donor named Steve Westly, a cleantech investor with money in a number of companies that received DOE loans, served briefly on a White House advisory council on clean energy. As a DOE spokeswoman said, “Attending two meetings of a non-binding public advisory panel hardly gave companies supported by Steve Westly a leg up — especially considering the board has no decisionmaking role, isn’t involved in making grants or loans, and never even discussed those companies.”

Anyway, a certain amount of suspicion and skepticism is inevitable and probably healthy. Crony capitalism is bad no matter who’s doing it. And I’m not going to lie: If it were the Bush administration and fossil-fuel investors involved, I’d be extremely suspicious.

But the Bush administration was routinely and openly corrupt; the Obama administration has been, despite all the recent atmospherics, remarkably corruption-free. Unless some actual evidence of collusion or impropriety emerges — and to date there has been none — there’s no reason to assume otherwise … unless you’re a media outlet hungry for clicks and ad revenue.

Anyway, as you can see, ABC and iWatch have managed quite a feat here, pumping up the impression of scandal with absolutely nothing to base it on. We probably shouldn’t be surprised. ABC’s Brian Ross is famous in the blogosphere for mangling an RFK Jr. quote to gin up controversy. And iWatch — a project of The Center for Public Integrity that seemed so promising when it launched — has produced a depressingly large amount of empty clickbait. (I give you this gem: “Limousine liberals? Number of government-owned limos has soared under Obama.” I mean really.) The headline for the Fisker story on the iWatch site right now is “Another Energy Boondoggle?”, which manages not only to inaccurately imply that Fisker is a boondoggle, but also to inaccurately call Solyndra a boondoggle!

There’s more involved here than Obama’s political fortunes. America desperately needs a forward-looking energy policy. It needs to be acting aggressively to support the cleantech industries that are going to dominate the 21st century. But that is simply going to be impossible if a vacuous, click-hungry press corps is going to gin up controversy out of every single investment. That’s what Politico and iWatch are doing: training politicians to play it safe, to be timid in the face of the country’s challenges.

The clicks aren’t worth it, y’all.

As news outlets hype the ABC News piece about Fisker Automotive, a company that received an Obama administration loan program while creating jobs both in Finland and Delaware, Republicans are likely to pounce as well. Already, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) appeared on Fox News to tout the Fisker story as part of a larger narrative about the failure of the Obama administration’s loan program. “On Solyndra, people are going to draw comparisons about [Fisker],” piped Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.Republicans exaggerated and misconstrued the controversy over Solyndra, a failed solar company that received a subsidized loan (originating from the Bush administration), to call to cutting all clean energy loan programs.

But before Republicans turn on the right-wing echo chamber to twist the Fisker story into some sort of case of wrongdoing, they should consider this ThinkProgress report about GOP lawmakers who have requested the same type of clean energy loans. According to the report, at least 62 requested green energy subsidies from the Obama administration. Both the Indiana and Louisina Republican delegations requested taxpayer money for energy efficient start-up car companies — using the same type of program obtained by Fisker Automotive:

– Reps. Todd Young (R), Larry Bucshon (R), Marlin Stutzman (R), Todd Rokita (R) and Dan Burton (R) signed a letter along with other Indiana lawmakers to Secretary Steven Chu requesting expedited action on a clean energy loan to Carbon Motors Corporation. The grant, the lawmakers claimed, would bring 1,500 jobs to Indiana while achieving “a positive impact on the environment.” View a copy of the Indiana letter supporting Carbon Motor’s Department of Energy grant request here. All five lawmakers voted ‘aye’ in a protest vote against Department of Energy clean energy grant programs.

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wrote two letters to Secretary Steven Chu asking for clean energy loans for a plant that would build electric cars. The letter, sent in June of 2009, claimed that the company could create 4,000 jobs. The Associated Press and Climate Progress have reported on the letters here.

– Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) sent a letter to Secretary Steven Chu requesting “expedited consideration” of a fuel efficiency loan grant for V-Vehicle Company to build a plant in his state. The entire Louisiana congressional delegation cosigned the June 2, 2010 letter, including clean energy critics Reps. Bill Cassidy (R), John Fleming (R), Steve Scalise (R), and Rodney Alexander (R). Vitter also sent letters recommending clean energy loan guarantees for Red River Environmental Products and Next Autoworks Company. View a copy of Vitter’s clean energy loan requests here. Fleming, Cassidy, Scalise, and Alexander voted “aye” in a protest vote against Department of Energy clean energy grant programs.

Read the rest of the report here.

Herman Cain

Listen to Herman Cain on the campaign trail, and you’ll hear him mock President Obama’s stimulus program a dozen different ways. Cain calls the program “a waste of money” that “didn’t stimulate anything other than bigger government” and a failure. One problem with Cain’s barrage of attacks? He sat on the board of directors of American corporations that applied for and received millions in stimulus money.

According to his personal financial disclosure (view a copy here), Cain supplements his income by being a board member for several large corporations. As a board member, he collected $202,500 from Agco Corporation, a farm products company, and $259,008 from Whirlpool Corporation (including options and a board salary). A review of stimulus spending records reveal that Cain’s companies have eagerly accepted stimulus money:

– Agco Corporation received up to $5 million of stimulus grants to develop “supply systems to handle and deliver high tonnage biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production.”

– Whirlpool Corporation received a $19,330,000 stimulus grant from the Department of Energy to develop SmartGrid solutions.

– Whirlpool launched a special offer to encourage customers to take advantage of the stimulus program’s energy efficient appliance program. The company advertised that certain Whirlpool, Maytag and KitchenAid appliances are available for rebate through the $300 million rebate program authorized by the stimulus.

– Whirlpool also received two stimulus grants of $2,042,700 to develop next generation energy efficient refrigerators.

Luckily for Cain, one of his corporations did not appear to receive any tainted stimulus money. According to his disclosure, Cain received $120,000 for his role on the board of Hallmark Cards Inc, the holiday greeting card company. A search by ThinkProgress reveals zero stimulus dollars directed to Hallmark.

Russ Roberts offers the hyper-nihilistic take on macroeconomic stabilization policy debates:

The evidence for the Keynesian worldview is very mixed. Most economists come down in favor or against it because of their prior ideological beliefs. Krugman is a Keynesian because he wants bigger government. I’m an anti-Keynesian because I want smaller government. Both of us can find evidence for our worldviews. Whose evidence is better? I’m not sure it’s a meaningful question. My empirical points about Keynesianism won’t convince Krugman. His point don’t convince me. I am not saying that we will never get any kind of decisive evidence on the question. I’m saying it sure isn’t here now.

That seems insane to me. Did George W Bush sign a 100 percent tax cuts stimulus bill in 2008 because he favored bigger government? That doesn’t sound right to me. I think he did a 100 percent tax cuts stimulus because congressional Democrats were pushing for stimulus, because many of his advisers believed in New Keynesian economic models, and because he doesn’t favor bigger government. Or consider this. In the late 1990s, the Keynesian thing to do was to run budget surpluses. Right-wing critics of the Clinton administration disagreed with this, preferring to expend the surpluses on tax cuts. Left-wing critics of the Clinton administration also disagreed with this, preferring to expend the surpluses on new programs. Either way, whether or not one believed the country should be following the Keynesian prescription of budget surpluses had nothing to do with beliefs about big or small government.

Here are some Keynesian questions:

— Regardless of the merits of deficit-financed tax cuts, do you think the case for them is stronger during downturns and weaker during spells of full employment?
— Regardless of the merits of deficit-financed increases in food stamp spending, do you think the case for them is stronger during downturns and weaker during spells of full employment?

The Keynesian answer, in both cases, is “yes.” It’s true that if unemployment is high and Democrats are in office, then in practical political terms Keynesian ideas will lead to bigger government. But if unemployment is low and Democrats are in office, then in practical political political terms Keynesian ideas will lead to smaller government. And if unemployment is low and Republicans are in office, then in practical political political terms Keynesian ideas will lead to bigger government. And if unemployment is high and Republicans are in office, then in practical political political terms Keynesian ideas will lead to smaller government.

I think the critique that Roberts and others want to make of left-wing Keynesians like Paul Krugman is to accuse Krugman of some kind of dishonest opportunism, like he suddenly started embracing Keynesian solutions in 2009. But there’s no evidence for that. Here’s Krugman in August of 2008 arguing that the U.S. fiscal position is more tenuous than it appears and politicians should resist embracing new surplus-diminishing initiatives. He’s not pushing for bigger government.

But the Grant Program is set to expire at the end of this year. Although the grants have been a resounding success for the renewable energy sector, the program is politically tarnished because it was created under Obama’s stimulus program.

Allowing this program to get killed by election-year politics would be a major mistake, as it would severely limit the growth of a valuable industry that has boomed in spite of the lagging economy.

A new report out from the business-to-business market research firm EuPD Research shows the immense economic value that could be created with an extension of the program. According to the report, which was commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association, a simple one-year extension of the Treasury Grant Program could leverage an additional 37,000 jobs — a 12% increase over the baseline. That could also help bring an additional 2 GW of solar projects online from 2012 to 2016.

A five-year extension through 2016 could result in an additional 114,000 jobs — a 32% increase in employment.   That could result in an additional 7.3 GW of installations over the baseline scenario, as this figure shows:

All those jobs and installations would bring strong domestic value. In 2010, the U.S. solar industry even had a $1.9 billion trade surplus with the rest of the world and a $247 million surplus with China, according to a study from GTM Research. That report also concluded that 73 cents of every dollar spent on a U.S. solar installation stayed within the country.

Because there aren’t as many financiers with the “tax appetite” (i.e. profits) to take advantage of tax credits, the grant program is vital to bringing in additional investors and maintaining the current momentum in the solar PV sector.

The Treasury Grant Program is a simple, proven mechanism that should be at the top of any political leader’s “to do” list when considering job creation. Let’s not let politics get in the way of America’s fastest growing industry.

Related Post:

• Solar is the “Fastest Growing Industry in America” and Made Record Cost Reductions in 2010

ROMNEY: [Obama] thinks if you have cash on your balance sheet, you’re going to go hire people. No, you hire people if you have customers. The President doesn’t understand what makes the American economy go. I do. [...]

SCARBOROUGH: The question is, what do you do, as a conservative president who believes in limited government, if you do, to actually drive demand?

ROMNEY: Very simple. You make America the most attractive place in the world for entrepreneurs, for innovators, for investors. That’s what got us going in the first place.

SCARBOROUGH: How do you do that?

ROMNEY: Well, you say alright, we’re going to make sure our employer tax rates are competitive globally. We’re going to have regulations and regulators encourage the private sector, rather than crush it.

Watch it:

Romney is absolutely right that the country is suffering from a demand-side economic crisis and that businesses won’t hire until they have more customers. But his remedies — corporate tax cuts and fewer regulations — would do nothing to spur demand.

Corporations are already sitting on hoards of cash, and it’s unclear how receiving more cash via tax breaks translates into more customers. It also terribly unclear how fewer regulations — which at the consumer level give people confidence that the products they’re buying won’t harm them or make them sick — translates into more purchasing power.

President Obama’s jobs plan, meanwhile, is aimed at the demand side of the economy (like the 2009 Recovery Act), providing tax breaks for the middle-class and fueling infrastructure projects that will require supplies and machinery. That’s likely why the economists who participated in a new Bloomberg News survey said that Obama’s jobs plan would prevent a double-dip recession.

SHELBY: Oh you mean his big tax increase and all that? Absolutely, I have a lot of reaction to it. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s like the son of stimulus. It’s always more taxes and not enough cuts.

Listen here:

As the Senate Banking Committee’s ranking member, Shelby almost certainly knows that the Recovery Act did not raise taxes. In fact, it cut them by $288 billion, mostly through tax credits for 95 percent of working families. There were zero tax increases in the stimulus package, nor were there any cuts, as the entire purpose of the bill was to jumpstart the economy.

ISSA: Whether or not the federal government borrows money from overseas sources to keep teachers in XYZ state on the payroll seems to be stimulus II. It seems to be something that the states have to decide what the right number of teachers are, and fund that, and not have us borrow money from overseas to keep $30 billion worth of money to try to aid the states. We did that once. It’s time for us to say states have to step up to the plate. That’s a good example where I don’t think that belongs in this stimulus bill. I don’t think we should be maintaining government workers with borrowed money.

Watch it:

As of March 2011, 132,000 teachers have been laid off since the beginning of the recession. Recent months have seen the sharpest decline in state and local jobs since the 1982.

In fact, federal payrolls have been mostly flat for years, even as the population has been growing. In November, President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for 1.9 million federal workers.

Issa is also wrong to suggest that the first stimulus package was unsuccessful. At its height, Recovery Act funds were supporting up to 3.6 million jobs. In June of this year, Recovery Act funding was still supporting up to 2.9 million jobs.

According to David Leonhardt, if state and local governments had continued to hire at their previous pace, they would have added half a million jobs to the economy. In other words, government austerity over the past two years “has cost the economy about one million jobs.”

This Minnesota bridge was also rated "structurally deficient"

President Obama’s plan to kickstart the economy and put the American people back to work includes investing in the nation’s rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, which, as studies have shown, is in need of as much as $2 trillion in immediate investment just to bring it up to date. In the past, Republicans have agreed that infrastructure improvements are needed, but in the context of economic stimulus and in their effort to remain opposed to anything Obama offers, they have chosen to ignore the nation’s infrastructure and jobs crises. Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t mean either crisis will go away.

Republican leadership has continually blocked efforts by Obama and Congressional Democrats to invest in infrastructure improvements, and as a result, bridges and roadways in their states are crumbling. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, about 12 percent of the nation’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient,” the same rating given to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people. Roughly another 12 percent are considered “functionally obsolete.” In four of the five states represented by Republican congressional leadership, the rate of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges outpaces the national average. ThinkProgress compiled a breakdown of the status of roads and bridges in each of those five states and, where applicable, individual congressional districts:

OHIO: 27 percent of the bridges Speaker John Boehner’s home state of Ohio are either “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete,” while one-fourth of its roads are considered poor or mediocre. At the heart of the Midwest, Ohio’s share of the national highway system has 171 highway bridges that are structurally deficient. 10 of those bridges are located in Boehner’s own district. Indeed, Obama singled out the Brent-Spence bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky as “one of the busiest trucking routes in North America.” A recent Cincinnati Enquirer investigation into the bridge noted that it “is one of only 15 major interstate bridges in the country labeled by the federal government as ‘functionally obsolete’ for failure to meet safety or traffic flow standards.”

KENTUCKY: More than one-third (34 percent) of the bridges in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state are structurally deficient or obsolete, including the Brent-Spence Bridge. Of those bridges, 108 are located on the national highway system, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Nearly one in five of Kentucky’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

VIRGINIA: In House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s home state, 26 percent of bridges are considered structurally deficient or obsolete, 104 of which are on the national highway system. Nearly one in four of the state’s roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition. In Cantor’s congressional district, 11 national highway bridges are considered deficient.

ARIZONA: In Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl’s home state, 12 percent of the bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” Of those in the national highway system, 25 are structurally deficient. Indeed, a recent report found that the poor rural roads and bridges in Arizona, where 21 percent of roads are considered poor or mediocre, have earned the state the eighth highest rural traffic fatality rate in the nation.

CALIFORNIA: Home to House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, California is perhaps most in need of infrastructure improvement. Thirty percent of its bridges are “structurally deficient or fundamentally obsolete.” Though a well-traveled state, California has a whopping 976 bridges on its national highways that are structurally deficient; 24 of those bridges are in McCarthy’s district. California ranks 19th in the nation for percentage of rural bridges that are structurally deficient, and two-thirds of its major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

Even as roads and bridges in their states fall apart, Republicans remain opposed to Obama’s efforts to invest in improvement projects. When progressives and Democrats pushed for more infrastructure spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Republicans demanded a bigger emphasis on tax cuts. When House Democrats passed a jobs bill geared toward infrastructure investment in February 2010, Republicans derailed it in the Senate. And unless the GOP undergoes a radical shift in priorities in the next few months, yet another plan that will help solve both America’s infrastructure and jobs crises will die at the hands of Congressional Republicans.

The result, as statistics from these five states show, is that the country continues to watch its infrastructure crumble while leaders in the Republican Party sit idly by, refusing to do anything about it.

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)

Many Republicans are already voicing their opposition to the proposal. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, spoke with NPR last night and revealed that his party’s opposition to the tax cut is rooted in class. The payroll tax cut, Price explained, is a “good nugget from a rhetorical standpoint, for the class warfare that [Obama] seems intent on fighting”:

SIEGEL: Well, let’s pick apart some of what he asked for today. Continuing the payroll tax holiday, both for employers and employees, Republicans on board with that possibly?

PRICE: Well, it’s a tax reduction in his eyes. In fact, it’s just a shift of the money to pay for Social Security. So, from a policy standpoint, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s a good nugget from a rhetorical standpoint, for the class warfare that he seems intent on fighting. But, you know, whether or not that survives, I don’t know. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from an economic standpoint because the money to pay Social Security recipients has to come from somewhere. If it’s not going to come from the payroll tax, then it’s going to come from the general fund. And so, then you’re just borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

Obama’s plan to pay for the working class tax cuts is to end wasteful tax loopholes for corporations and wealthy investors. Price, who touts himself as a pro-growth tax cutter, is waging his own class warfare: protecting tax subsidies for billionaires to prevent substantive tax cuts for working families.

But while the GOP leadership has made some conciliatory comments — with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) saying that “the proposals the President outlined tonight merit consideration” — many Republicans have derided the plan by calling it another stimulus, along the lines of the 2009 Recovery Act:

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): “More stimulus? Do we really need ‘son of stimulus’? We passed a trillion dollars in stimulus. Will billions more do the job? There is nothing new here…I hope Congress doesn’t pass this plan.”

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): “The failed stimulus and its successor policies have proven that massive government deficit spending is not the solution — it is the problem.” Issa also “poo-pooed the president’s job package, saying it sounds like a ‘second stimulus.’”

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): “Although the plan we heard tonight sounds a lot like a replay of his 2009 stimulus bill, even the President has now come to realize what Americans have known for some time, it simply didn’t work. $800 billion in federal spending got us where we are today.”

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL): “This seems to be nothing more than a son of stimulus proposal that will generate more political rhetoric than jobs. If that is the case, I will firmly reject it.”

REP. ANDY HARRIS (R-MD): “We didn’t hear a whole lot new. This is basically ‘stimulus two.’”

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): “Two and a half years after the President’s signature jobs bill was signed into law, 1.7 million fewer Americans have jobs. So, I’d say that Americans have 1.7 million reasons to oppose another stimulus.”

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN REINCE PREIBUS: “Despite one failed stimulus, the President wants even more deficit spending.”

Of course, all of this criticism is based on the incorrect assumption that the 2009 Recovery Act didn’t work. But as the Congressional Budget Office has continually found, the Recovery Act created or supported millions of jobs, keeping the unemployment rate up to two points below where it otherwise would have been. At its height in the third quarter of 2010, Recovery Act funds were supporting up to 3.6 million jobs.

In June of this year, Recovery Act funding was still supporting up to 2.9 million jobs. This chart tracks the change in employment that occurred following the passage of the Recovery Act:

Thus far, economists have offered “mainly positive reviews” of Obama’s plan, with Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics estimating that “the plan would add 2 percentage points to GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.” Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that the plan will boost growth by 1.5 percentage points, while the Economic Policy Institute said that the plan will create 2.6 million jobs and support another 1.6 million, boosting overall employment by almost 4.3 million.

The reason that unemployment is so high, even with the Recovery Act, is that it wasn’t big enough to deal with the scale of the problem. But to Republicans, the millions of jobs created by the Recovery Act signal abject failure, and therefore Obama’s new jobs plan doesn’t warrant consideration, even as the economy struggles to throw off the chains of the Great Recession.

The tax holiday benefits every working American, but Republicans have derided it as having no benefit to the economy. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) called the holiday “sugar high economics,” while Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said that “not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.” A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said Cantor “has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy.”

However, the Center for American Progress’ Michael Linden and John Griffith note that not only were these GOPers supportive of temporary tax cuts to boost the economy under President Bush — they voted for just such a policy move (plus some additional spending) by approving Bush’s Economic Stimulus Act of 2008:

In January 2008 when the economic picture was far less dire and the unemployment rate was only 4.8 percent, 165 Republicans in the House of Representatives and 33 Republican senators voted to pass a stimulus package with an estimated cost of $152 billion. That package provided tax cuts of up to $600 for individuals or $1,200 for married couples, plus an additional $300 per child. The bill also contained a number of temporary tax breaks for businesses. And just in case you thought President George W. Bush’s stimulus bill was simply a bunch of tax cuts, it also included $40 billion in direct spending. The legislation was even called the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

President Bush lauded the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 for providing “a booster shot for our economy … [putting] money back into the hands of American workers and businesses.” Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and John Boehner (R-OH) as well as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) all seemed to agree, as did nearly 200 other Republican members of Congress that voted in support of the bill.

In fact, as Linden and Griffith point out, “of the 134 current House Republicans that were also serving in 2008, 85 percent voted in favor of temporary tax cuts and additional spending as economic stimulus,” including Cantor, though he “never believed” in temporary tax measures to boost the economy:

Of course, since President Obama came into office, the GOP has consistently found reasons to oppose ideas that it once supported.