Brian Beutler August 3, 2010, 3:26 PM

It’s hard to find any Republicans these days who will admit that the President Obama’s stimulus had any positive effect on the economy. But today two GOP senators acknowledged candidly that the Recovery Act did indeed create jobs… just not enough of them.

“Anytime you spend $600 billion in a $14, $13 trillion [economy], you’re going to have a positive effect, because you put that money into the economy,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) at a morning press conference. “It’s had a positive effect in terms of people keeping their jobs that work for state governments and local governments. But the question is could we have had a more positive effect. And that was the problem with this stimulus from the get-go. That’s the problem with these programs. If you spend $300,000 in Tucson, could you have spent that money and created more jobs and created something of real value.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) didn’t go quite as far as suggesting the stimulus had a “positive” effect, but he did admit it created jobs. “Can I just point out again, they’re bound to have had, when you spend this much money, some jobs created,” McCain admitted. “But what’s the price we’ve paid. Future generations of Americans. A $1.1 trillion additional debt. That, in my view, overwhelmingly negates any ‘positive’ effects that it may have had in the short term.”

McCain and Coburn have coauthored a report, blasted by the White House, in which they purport to outline 100 wasteful stimulus projects.

When the stimulus passed in February of last year, Coburn released a statement calling it “the worst act of generational theft in our history.”

“If the economy improves it will be in spite of, not because of, this bill,” he said.

McCain supported an alternative proposal consisting mostly of tax cuts, in addition to infrastructure spending.

Barack Obama, Democrats, John McCain, Stimulus, Tom Coburn