(CNSNews.com) – A former Republican congressional budget chief called the Obama administration’s claims to fiscal responsibility “hypocritical” and “laughable,” noting in particular the mounting unemployment numbers (9.8 percent nationwide) despite the $787-billion stimulus plan enacted in February that he said was poorly designed. 

"The Obama Administration's claims of fiscal responsibility are both hypocritical .... [a]nd laughable," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2003 through 2005, wrote in an Oct. 14 memo to Republican members of the House of Representatives.  

Holtz-Eakin said in the memo that the hastily written stimulus bill enacted in February--the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--was "poorly designed" and that was “probably one of the reasons why we’ve lost 3 million private-sector jobs since it became law."
 
“A minority (under $300 billion) of the near trillion-dollar bill cut taxes, and very little cut marginal tax rates,” he said. “The result was no real improvement in economic incentives.”

Holtz-Eakin's memo was in response to a letter sent to House Republicans on Monday by White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers. Summers's letter blamed most of the economy’s ailments on the Bush administration and insisting that the economy is on the upswing.  Summers, in turn, was responding to early GOP criticisms of the stimulus.
 
“We have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery,” Summers wrote to House Republicans. 

Summers, a former Treasury secretary, said President Barack Obama “is committed to not repeating the fiscal mistakes of the last eight years.”
 
Summers added, “Every major policy enacted during this period [under Bush] violated the principle of paying for new proposals. These policy decisions were the primary driver that turned historic projected surpluses into record deficits.”
 
But “what Mr. Summers leaves out is probably more important than what he touts,” Holtz-Eakin wrote.
 
“Despite repeated attempts to blame all fiscal woes on the previous administration, the facts show that under Republicans the deficit never exceeded 3.6 percent of GDP and at the close of fiscal year 2008 the debt-to-GDP ratio was 40 percent,” he wrote.
 
“The CBO indicates that under the administration’s plans, the deficit will never fall below 4 percent of GDP and the debt-to-GDP ratio will be 82 percent and spiraling upward,” wrote Holtz-Eakin.
 
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs expressed confidence in the effectiveness of the $787-billion stimulus package.
 
“Well, look, I think if you look at the reports today, you see that literally tens of thousands of jobs in the classroom have been saved alone by the recovery plan,” Gibbs told reporters.
 
“I think you'll see projects that will talk about both saving jobs as well as creating them,” said Gibbs. “As we've talked about here the last several weeks – and, really, dating back to the very beginning of this – the recovery plan was intended to cushion the deep downturn in our economy.
 
“We think that the plan has done that,” said Gibbs. “I think we certainly are hopeful that in the growth numbers that will be coming out later this month you'll see positive economic growth. Again, as the president has said many times, there is still a long way to go, and we need to make sure that those that are looking for work can find it.”