Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Federal Stimulus Jobs Numbers Inflated

Obama's continued bowing may be embarassing, but it isn't important. This is important:

A powerful House Democrat used unusually harsh terms to blast the Obama administration's manipulation of stimulus data Monday night, and demanded an honest accounting of results from the $787 billion government program.

Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, took the administration to task for pervasive errors on the Web site designed to monitor disbursement of the stimulus funds. He called those errors "outrageous."

"Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it. We've got too many serious problems in this country to let that happen," Obey said in a statement. "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."

Obey demanded a commitment from the executive branch that they would "work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes." Congress and the public should be able to trust reports by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board, he said.

The administration has already slashed 60,000 jobs from its estimates of how many jobs were created by the stimulus, after discovering "unrealistic data" submitted by stimulus recipients. In one extreme example, the stimulus Web site reported that 50 jobs were created or saved by an Arkansas cemetery's purchase of a lawnmower for roughly $1,000.


A new review found that the number of jobs created or saved by federal stimulus money as stated by this administration had been greatly exaggerated.

More on this debacle here.

The most common error appeared to be counting temporary or part-time work as a full-time job. Was this on purpose? Did they not think people would check on this?

I can't figure out the people who run this administration. Either they are cold stone liars who believe they will never get caught, or they are incompetent to the point of danger.

I'm think it's the latter, which is the most problematic.

This administration praises itself on transparency, but transparency doesn't mean much if you are putting out wrong information.

The bottom line is the administration can throw out the "created or saved" jobs number all day long, but the only jobs number that matters is the one that will finally say that unemployment is no longer in the double digits.

Don't expect that to happen any time soon.

Ironically it is the black community that has suffered the most under Obama's policy of focusing on other issues rather than jobs. Black unemployment has skyrocketed to 15.7 percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago. The black unemployment rate has climbed above 20 percent in several states, reaching 23.9 percent in Michigan and 20.4 percent in South Carolina.