A new report out by the CBO finds that the stimulus most likely saved this country:

President Obama’s much-maligned economic stimulus package added as many as 3.3 million jobs to the economy during the second quarter of this year, and may have prevented the nation from lapsing back into recession, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

In its latest quarterly assessment of the act, the CBO said the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points during the quarter ending in June and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million. The higher figure would come close to making good on Obama’s pledge that the act would save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year.

The CBO said the act also increased the nation’s gross domestic product by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent in the second quarter, indicating that the stimulus may have been the primary source of growth in the U.S. economy. The Commerce Department estimates that GDP grew 2.4 percent in the second quarter, a figure many economists expect to be revised lower in a report due out Friday.

Since the stimulus passed, Republican leaders, like John Boehner, have jumped in front of the cameras at any chance to say it was a failure. These numbers sure don’t look like a failure to me. As matter of fact, they would probably be much higher if we could have had a bigger stimulus passed. Sadly Republican obstructionism wouldn’t allow that.