Would Mitt Romney have backed a stimulus package?

After Mitt accuses Obama of wasting money and killing jobs, commentators turn back the clock to 2009 to imagine what President Romney would have done

"I think there is need for economic stimulus," said Mitt Romney in January 2009 in response to a question about Obama's push for a stimulus plan.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Mitt Romney is attacking President Obama's $800 billion economic stimulus package, saying that it actually killed jobs. A senior Romney campaign aide calls the spending the "mother of all earmarks," accusing Obama of wasting taxpayer funds by steering it to donors and destroying the public's confidence in the economy. The White House counters by saying that Obama "brought the nation back from the brink of another Depression" and rescued the auto industry, which it says Romney would have let die. If Romney were in charge during the dark days of early 2009, what would he have done?

Romney would have backed a stimulus, too: The presumptive GOP nominee should not be able to say "with a straight face that he wouldn't have pushed for some stimulus spending to rescue an economy in freefall," says Greg Sargent at The Washington Post. In January 2009, he flat out said that a stimulus was needed to keep the economy and middle-class families above water. He wasn't endorsing Obama's exact plan, but he inarguably backed "stimulus spending in general." So it's "ridiculously incoherent" for him to say now that Obama's stimulus spending somehow impeded the recovery.

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