"We were promised. The president said we would keep unemployment under 8.5 percent (if the stimulus passed)." Since then, it has become frequent conservative talking point -- cited repeatedly by Fox's Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and others. So we thought it was worth revisiting.
First, we could find no instance of anyone in the administration directly making such a public pledge. Rather, it comes via a Jan. 9, 2009, report called
"The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, the vice president's top economic adviser.