In January, when President Obama first began pushing for an economic stimulus bill, he made it clear that the No. 1 priority of the legislation was job creation. “Our first job is to put people back to work and get our economy working again,” he said in his weekly radio address.

When he signed the stimulus the following month, Obama’s administration specifically promised it would hold unemployment to 8 percent during the summer and then cause it to decline. It’s the end of December now. Unemployment is at 10 percent.