Posted by
Dave Smith on Saturday, October 31, 2009 3:45:09 PM
The
White House is reporting
that the so-called "stimulus" bill has "created or saved" 640,329
jobs. That's a pretty precise number, except, as ABC News reports,
"[o]fficials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that
states
and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes." First of
all, if the Obama Administration is aware that the number is not
accurate, why post such a precise number?
But
it's even more insulting when you look further into the numbers.
According to the same website, approximately $207.1 billion of the
"stimulus" has been spent. The ostensible purpose of the "stimulus"
spending was to "save or create" jobs. Even taking the
Administration's own numbers at face value, that means that the
government has spent over $320,000
per job that has been "saved or created". That's even worse than the numbers
ABC News reported when
a top Obama economic adviser accused them of "calculator abuse" for
claiming the government was paying $160,000 per job (the difference in
their calculation and mine seems to be the amount of "stimulus" money
actually spent; they report "$159 billion in stimulus funds allocated
as of Sept. 30", while my calculation is based on the official White
House reporting as of October 31).
Only government could assert
that a simple calculation of unit cost is "calculator abuse".
Apparently simple mathematics and honesty are too much to ask of our
elected officials and what they do with our money.