So it could have been an even bigger failure?

Via CBS News:

KROFT: I’m not saying this as fact, and hindsight is always 20-20. But there’s [a] general perception that the stimulus was not enough. That it really didn’t work. That. . .

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let me stop you there, Steve. First of all, there’s not general perception that the stimulus didn’t work. You’ve got John McCain’s former economist and a whole series of prominent economists, who say that it created or saved three millions jobs and prevented us from going into a great depression. That works. So that’s not true. It is true that some people have argued, given the magnitude of the crisis we were in, we should have done an even larger Recovery Act. And then I’m bumping up against the realities of Congress, which is this Recovery Act was twice as large as most people thought was even possible. And yet, because the problem was so big, you can make an argument that it might have been larger.