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"Obama's misleading jobs rhetoric

Examiner Editorial
February 16, 2010
Source WashingtonExaminer.com
 
"There he goes again. In the latest Economic Report of the President, Obama repeats his claim that the $787 billion economic stimulus program "has saved or created roughly two million jobs so far." Administration officials stopped saying that last year after journalists and think tankers across the political spectrum examined the supporting data posted on the official recovery.gov Web site and found it full of factual holes.

Thousands of jobs were claimed to have been saved or created in phantom congressional districts and ZIP codes. Thousands of raises given to public employees were counted as jobs saved or created. The Examiner's David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway examined media investigations and found nearly 100,000 phony positions. In other words, the claim that 2 million jobs were saved or created by the Obama economic stimulus program was exposed as being about as trustworthy as the used car salesman's assurance that the clunker on his lot was owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.

The fiasco prompted Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag to issue new "simplified guidelines" for how to measure the effect of the stimulus program on employment. But, as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a Jan. 8 letter to recovery.gov's inspector general, the new guidelines actually raised additional credibility questions about White House assertions on the stimulus program's effectiveness.

Said Issa: "The new guidance counts every job that is funded using stimulus money -- even if it existed before the Recovery Act, and was not in any danger of being eliminated -- as 'created or saved.' This definition ignores the plain meanings of the words 'created' and 'saved,' and makes Recovery.gov's 'JOBS CREATED/SAVED' label a falsehood, further eroding the confidence of the American people in their government."

Some of the president's closest economic advisers also made some startling claims in connection with the new Economic Report. Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer, for example, said the economic stimulus program saved millions of Americans from "destitution." The dictionary defines destitution as "utter poverty" and the "lack of the means of subsistence." Who could have imagined that wasting money on fake jobs would yield such miraculous results?"

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama_s-misleading-jobs-rhetoric-84422777.html