Say Anything Blog

Conservatives have been laughing at Obama’s transparently bogus “jobs created or saved” numbers.  But now as the grim reality of Obama’s economic policies set in, the “created or saved” numbers are, more and more, sticking out like a sore thumb.

It is hard to reconcile Friday’s dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report with Vice President Joe Biden’s claim from the previous Friday that “the Recovery Act is operating as advertised.” The BLS related the news that almost 200,000 more jobs were lost in the past month - the 14th consecutive month with losses in the hundreds of thousands - and that the unemployment rate now stands at 10.2 percent. Despite the barrage of terrible employment figures, don’t expect the administration to back off its bold claim that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is on pace to deliver its promised year-end 1 million jobs “created or saved.”

The Obama Administration has demonstrated a knack for clever grammatical constructions, and “created or saved” might be the most artful. By using jobs saved and not just jobs created as the measuring stick, the administration is able to trumpet eye-catchingly large numbers - as attested by the Biden’s triumphal pronouncement that $160 billion of spending had already created or saved almost 650,000 jobs.

And, as Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently explained, advertising success on the jobs front is crucial: “the number one subject on the minds of the American people,” she said after a meeting with economists, is “jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.”

Perhaps the Democrats are proud of their ability to dupe the masses with large, important-sounding but ultimately meaningless numbers.  But those of us actually concerned about the economic health of the nation are something less than impressed.

And even if we take Biden’s numbers as gospel truth, we’re talking about roughly $240,000 in taxpayer spending per job created or saved.

That’s hardly indicative of efficient government policy.