Errors cast doubts on legitimacy and success of the economic stimulus package

In another example of deception or gross neglect on the part of the United States government, this time under the leadership of President Barack Obama, more than ten percent of jobs the Obama administration claimed were “created or saved” by the $787 billion economic stimulus package were, in the words of eleven major national newspapers and the Associated Press, “doubtful or imaginary.”

According to the report, researched and released by several of the country’s most-read and reliable news sources - The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the Sacramento Bee, The New York Times, USA Today, the Las Vegas Sun, the Detroit Free Press, the New York Post, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – out of 650,000 jobs allegedly “created or saved,” 75,000 were exaggerated. This figure does not include 60,000 jobs the federal government initially intended to claim were “saved or created” by the stimulus package which were excluded prior to its release due to unreliable reports.

"No government agency, private sector group or research economics has any idea what the reliable calculation track for these numbers would be," Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) said.

Examples of the miscalculations, which were posted on www.recovery.gov, the web site used by the administration to report the success of the program to the American public, include: 30 jobs created at a cost of $761,420 in federal spending in the 15th Congressional district of Arizona, a district which does not exist; 650 jobs allegedly saved in a Kankakee, Illinois school district which employs 600 workers; 50 jobs created by a $1,000 grant to purchase a lawn mower in Fayetteville, Arkansas; one job created by a $3,500 purchase of paint in Washington DC; 26,000 jobs allegedly saved in the California State University system by $268 million in federal stimulus funds in Sacramento, California, even though the system admitted the jobs were never in jeopardy, and; 24,000 of 34,500 jobs claimed to be “created or saved” in Olympia, Washington, despite the admission by Washington state officials that teachers who held the jobs in question were not going to lose their jobs.

According to Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Recovery Board, the mistakes were the result of human error.

“We report what the recipients submit to us,” Communications Director Pound said. "Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes."

G. Edward DeSeve, President Obama’s appointee to oversee the federal government’s stimulus programs, downplayed the significance of the errors, claiming there were "relatively few" inaccuracies and that they did not alter the "fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data," despite an acknowledgement that 28,420 jobs were incorrectly reported as being “created or saved” in 50 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia and $6.4 billion stimulus dollars was shown as being spent in 440 false districts alone. These figures do not include approximately 50,000 jobs which were not created and hundreds of millions of fruitlessly spent dollars.

"Some of the mistakes are frustrating typos and coding errors that don't undermine information at the heart of the data," DeSeve said. "Transparency is going to be messy."

Despite the Communications Director’s efforts to deflect criticism and excuse the incredible discrepancies, a bipartisan group of legislators expressed concerns about the accuracy of the government report.

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes,” Representative David Obey (D-WI) said.

"Someone who doesn't know which congressional district they're in doesn't have enough of a clue to receive taxpayer money in the first place," Representative Obey added. "When you put out information that turns out to be inaccurate, you shouldn't be surprised if the public says, 'Hey, do they know what they're doing?' When you cite the jobs created in congressional districts that don't exist, I think that strikes anyone from the White House on down as being more than stupid."

Representative Issa argued the job reporting was “entirely deceitful” and said “it is very clear not by the witnesses here, not by, in fact, Recovery.gov directly but by how this is being treated, how these jobs continue to be claimed, and how, in fact we are dealing with 3.8 million lost jobs and yet we are told to focus on the 640,000 saved jobs and how much worse it would be."

“The truthiness of the president's claims is mind-boggling," Representative Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) added. "How can we expect the administration to run stimulus when they can't even run a Web site?"
Representative Brown-Waite’s concern about the ability of the Obama administration to oversee the economic recovery of the United States through implementation of the stimulus package has other, arguably more serious implications. The inconsistencies and falsities included in the government report could raise questions about the viability of a government entity implementing an expensive federal spending program and lead to justifiable skepticism about the ability of the Obama administration to oversee ambitious and questionable policy proposals such as comprehensive immigration reform and “cap and trade,” which are integral to President Obama’s political agenda.