Transcript from the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Sept. 8, 2011:

RACHEL MADDOW at 03:32: In December 2009, the White House recognized that we needed more stimulus — that we had done some good with the previous stimulus but more was needed. The problem was really bad. But nothing materialized. We got health [care] reform but we didn’t get a second stimulus.

There has essentially been no additional stimulus for the economy since [the first round in early 2009].

And since then — here’s the most important thing — since then, we have also learned that the whole problem that the stimulus was designed to address — the whole economic problem was way, way worse than we thought it was, even when we thought it was really bad.

Remember how I said the economy shrank by half a percent in the third quarter of 2008? Shrank by half a percent in the third quarter of 2008. That’s what we originally thought.

Turns out it did not shrink by half a percent. It actually shrank by 3.7 percent.

Remember that big, scary 3.8 percent that we thought that economy shrank by in the last quarter of 2008? Turns out it wasn’t 3.8 percent. Actually it was 8.9 percent. That is not a typo. That’s how fast the economy was shrinking.

Republicans look at this chain of events and say, “Ah, see, well the Stimulus didn’t work.”

Everybody else looks at these numbers and says, “Well, the Stimulus did something, but giuven what we now know about what we were up against, it’s clear that it was not enough.”

It’s clear that we actually did need that second round of stimulus the president was sort of pushing for back in December 2009, but not that hard.

What we’re seeing now in the economy is the effect of not getting further stimulus. Not only that the economy has proven to be resiliently bad, but also because it was way worse than we thought it was when we initially designed the things we that we were going to do to try to fix it.

The hope is that it is not too late. But time’s up and we gotta do something.