Actually, lemme step back and explain something for those who don't know what the QE we're talking about is. Quantitative Easing is a policy the Federal Reserve, or other national central bank but the Fed in the US's case, can do.
To take from wikipedia, "A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other financial institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the money supply."
In short, they're buying stuff from the banks
You see, what it basically boils down to is in order to make an economy work better, what it, like most things, needs is more money.
And the stimulus provided that, in solid quantity. Enough that 3.3 million jobs were created by it- and these are, like, construction jobs, do stuff jobs, things that add money at a variety of places- this helps especially because many of these sectors were the hardest hit. Now, that's just the part of the stimulus going to projects, a fair amount went to tax cuts- which, if they didn't go around and spend it, didn't help much, but still, better than nothing. Also, not the stimulus itself, but the auto-maker bailout, similar thing, it gave money to prevent companies from going under... and saved an estimate 1.5 million jobs (thus, between the two, we're at 4.8 mil jobs, got it? Good). It costs money- temporarily, we were paid back for the bailout, but it causes economic activity and it prevents the lack of jobs from dragging things further south and causing more job loss.
And while the effects of that were felt over the next few years, it, obviously did not last through the whole recession. Even all that? Not enough, just part of the patch on the ship.
So! You need more money and you can't pass a second stimulus. The recovery will slow, even stall, without it.
You're screwed, right?
But, that's where Qualitative Easing comes in! With Obama's blessing, the Fed did the only form of stimulus available- it bought assets from the banks, got money into the system, and increased the value of assets by reducing their yield.
Now, you see the problem here, right? Right, that's going through the banks. It is helping the economy, helping things recover, preventing businesses from going under, but it's not providing much in the way of jobs to lower and middle class people, not directly, and thus not helping their wages as much. And once the Stimulus ran out, we had to make due with QE, which is why those areas are lagging behind in recovery- though, as noted, still growing.
But even so, that's a matter of, 'we were able to get out of the recession, half of the good way, half of the kludge way, which is a heck of a lot better than being in a recession.'
"But wait, Q, even with this, you said Republican economics are horrible and yet even you admit Reagan's performance is in Obama's tier! If it's so bad, what's up with that?"
Ah! This is where Reagan was smart.
You see, Ronald Reagan, for all his talk of tax cuts, did not do austerity. Not like the modern Republicans are pushing.
No, what did his do while cutting taxes, was increase spending, in the guise of defense projects. The famous SDI/Star Wars project, new F/A-18s and other equipment, etc. etc.. The defense budget under Reagan got up to 200 billion per year higher than it was right before him (800 billion stimulus? 200 a year x a number of years, calculate what's actually more expensive!).
Sooo what we had was... money going into the economy. Though through the defense industry, usually the high-end R&D groups, not low and middle class jobs, so again, we had a widening gap between rich and poor during that recovery too. Without the opposed congress, but what he did was he got the 'Fiscally Conservative' party to pay for the biggest stimulus project since the WW2, but since the stimulus was going to jets and satellites, he got them on board.
Inefficient money-wise, and again not targeted in a way that helped very evenly, but it worked. Money got back into the economy, things recovered.
And that's why Reagan had a reasonable recovery under his term of office.
So on the one hand, you have Obama start out with the simple and effective 'hire people to build infrastructure and do various jobs,' but have to fall back on the Federal Reserve working through the banks, and Reagan who worked by, effectively, propping up the economy with one really huge addition to one industry, the defensive industry.
And then on the other hand you have people who think the answer to a recession or depression is to cut spending, even though it always backfires, and it's not what Reagan did, if in a round-about way. In the end, Reagan's recovery worked because it avoided austerity, Obama's recovery worked because he avoided austerity, and if someone got power now and implemented austerity, while we're healed enough for it to not be super-critical, it'd still wound a shaky economy... as long as it was prevented from being *too* big of cuts. And a number of the Republican plans? Go for some really massive cuts. Long story short, bad idea.
Some day, maybe we'll have a President who's allowed to do a targeted infrastructure-and-services based stimulus throughout a recovery and thus avoid these uneven recoveries of Reagan and Obama, or the dip in the middle of FDR's "Your New Deal is working great? Let's put a pause button on that!", but it hasn't happened yet. Still, we can hope!