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“Madam Speaker, I continue to hear my friends on the other side of the aisle refer to the stimulus bill as a failed policy, apparently in the belief that if you say it over and over again, it will be true. But it’s not true. Not by a long shot.

“Last year at this time, the stock market was at 6,500. Today, it's at 10,600.

“One year ago, during the first quarter of 2009, G.D.P. came in at a staggering 6 percent decline. But in the last quarter of 2009, it rose almost 6 percent.

“Monthly job losses, while still not where we want them to be, are literally 20 times better than they were a year ago today.

“Some may say this would have happened anyway and that the stimulus had nothing to do with it. But I would ask my colleagues, Madam Speaker, to consider that that would be quite a coincidence, don’t you think, for all those economic indicators to begin such a dramatic turnaround at precisely the time when the stimulus passed. Quite a coincidence indeed.”