Numbers Don’t Lie — Except When They’re Fabricated
Behold, the sublime insanity of the administration's job creation lies.
Anyone who remembers his campaign pronouncement that a Kansas tornado had left “ten thousand dead” and “an entire town destroyed” (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve people) knows that President Obama hasn’t been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.
However, Mr. Obama’s dogged refusal to deviate from his “150,000 jobs created or saved” by the $787,000,000,000.00 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching.
Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now. On May 27, “White House economic advisers” announced the “stimulus” had “created or saved 150,000 jobs” since its inception 100 days before — an average increase (or savings) of about 1,500 jobs a day.
Twelve days later, on June 8, Vice President Joe Biden made the same proclamation on a conference call with reporters: the stimulus had “saved or created 150,000 [jobs]” to date.
Theoretically, there should have been about 18,000 more jobs than that, given the twelve day interval between the May 27 announcement and the June 8 call. But never mind that.
Just for good measure — and despite the fact that economists and simple observers who had the virtue of being awake were throwing up their hands in disbelief that an administration would actually make such a claim about something as obviously incalculable as a “saved” job — Biden added that there had been “no reasonable challenges to the estimates.”
Last Wednesday, July 8 — a full 30 days after the Biden conference call and 42 days after the initial 100 day claim of “150,000 jobs created or saved” — Obama’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget announced the stimulus had (you guessed it!) “created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February.”
Judging by the administration’s own claims alone, that’s one package that seems to have lost its, well, stimulation.
Interestingly, Obama himself said in early June — just after he first made the 150,000 job claim — that he was “not satisfied” with the package’s progress. Then this past Saturday, July 11 — after a full month of no job creation or savings, according to his administration’s claims — he suddenly declared that the stimulus had been a success and that it has “worked as intended.”
So the intent of this $787,000,000,000.00 legislation, which the president claimed would “create or save 3.5 to 4 million jobs,” was actually to “create or save” 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days, then hold fast at that number?
That seems like a wise investment — only $5.25 million of taxpayers’ dollars per job!
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Mr. Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a columnist, a Pulitzer-nominated combat journalist, and a director emeritus of conservative weblog RedState.com.
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26 Comments
1. Realist:There are two possible conclusions to draw from this latest Obambi ‘libtard’ nonsense.
1) Obambi and his crew have nothing but contempt for the American people and are treating them like morons.
2) A great number of the American people are indeed gullible morons judging by the lack of critical responses to the nonsense.
I think both conclusions are correct.
Jul 15, 2009 - 12:52 am 2. Marc Malone:#1 Realist – Yes, and yes. You forgot that throughout the campaign, the lies flowed from Obama’s lips in a torrent. So, what’s new?
Jul 15, 2009 - 2:07 am 3. Libertyship46:I also want everybody to understand when this horrific “stimulus” package was passed, it was told by the president and his minions that this was going to create jobs, not save them. So far almost no jobs have been created by this expensive mess and the bill is turning into another bailout to the states for the specific purpose of paying down their debts, which was NOT the point of the bill. “Shovel Ready Jobs,” remember that laugh? The only shovel around here is the one Obama used to spread around the fertilizer in fond hopes that green things would grow. No green shoots coming up, only weeds.
Jul 15, 2009 - 4:14 am 4. Mike2:Obama can claim success all he wants but wait until another 3 million or so Americans are out of work. Eventually enough people are going to be out of work that either the reality of the situation will sink in or Congress will have to keep on passing stimulus bills just to pay for the unemployment checks.
Jul 15, 2009 - 5:03 am 5. Jerry:Though the point has been made before, it is important to re-state it until it is absorbed by the American public:
There will be no job creation until the 2010 election will be hanging in the balance.
There will be no recovery until of any sort until President Obama needs to be re-elected in 2012.
Indeed, it is Mr. Obama’s second term that poses the most problems for American liberal democracy and its associated values. If he manages to “change” things through Congressional action, it will become an issue in his mind as to whether he will allow his successor to the Presidency to “change” his changes.
Jul 15, 2009 - 5:03 am 6. anton:More importantly, there are NO “shovel ready jobs” anymore.
Back in FDR’s (of cursed memory) day people built stuff with shovels. These days you are not going to find a laid-off software designer repairing the chuckholes in your road with a wheelbarrow of asphalt and a shovel. All of those sort of jobs disappeared after WW2 when the construction business mechanized. Also with the end of the housing boom there are tons of laid-off heavy equipment operators to step into those positions.
What The One meant to say was that there will plenty of positions opened up in pointless nonproductive patronage programs. Billions will be needed to keep various “too big to fail” (read that as union jobs) entities from going under so that the UAW can keep feeding the coffers of the DNC.
No one in the Administration has a clue about the economy, or economics for that matter. The scariest part is that they really think they know what they are doing. Either that, or they are certain that most Americans are too stupid to see what is happening around them. I’m not sure what is worse.
There isn’t an economic plan, it’s the Chicago Machine on a national scale.
Jul 15, 2009 - 5:54 am 7. blotto:Realist: Bingo!! But let’s not forget that the dutiful and sycophantic MSM has done a marvelous job of covering up for the Dear Leader’s mistakes…
I hate to say this but I agree with Michael Schuer, former CIA, that it will take another attack to wake up the American public to what this poseur has done to us.
Jul 15, 2009 - 6:15 am 8. Sebastian Shaw:President Obama will make Jimmy Carter look like a genius. At least Jimmy Carter will share the title of “Worst President in Modern History” after 30 years of bearing the title himself. Misery loves company.
Jul 15, 2009 - 6:52 am 9. JED:The ability to spawn and propagate such “disinformation” is relative to the apathy of the American public, the hype of available distractions, the inevitable tax bill, any clear and present danger, and how hungry the unemployed become.
Jul 15, 2009 - 7:28 am 10. JED:The captain of the Titanic must have reassured those passengers that everything was going to be all right, the ship was unsinkable, and moving to the life boats was just a precaution. He may have apologized for “misreading” the iceberg.
Amendment to an ethical dilemma: Did the captain of the Titanic lie to the passengers if he told them not to panic or was he being a empathetic pragmatist who only wanted to avoid a panic?
Jul 15, 2009 - 7:37 am 11. Steve:Jobs created can be measured, but these would be mostly government jobs that produce nothing of real value or substance (except maybe sales of pain medication) or they will be short lived jobs done by those still in the work force. Jobs saved can not be calculated by any means and are just meaningless. There never has been a method devised for such and there can not be, it is simply made up and most people with even modest intellect understand it for the farce that it is. Remember to vote in 2010 to remove those that support this insanity and get all you know to do the same.
Jul 15, 2009 - 9:03 am 12. Sallie:JOBS?? Yes, right before the 2010 election. then a biggie job rush right before 2012.
The moronic press never asks the hard questions and americans just..well, do nothing. Unfortunately, I am one of the americans that do nothing as I don’t know what to do. I watch Obama on TV and have to turn the channel, I find him depressing and disgusting.
Liars , Washington seems to be full of them. Is that a prerequisite to be in office? “please elect me, I lie really well”.
Jul 15, 2009 - 9:32 am 13. bill:When I took economics (back in the day before the discipline was completely politicized) I could have sworn my teacher said that you needed to create wealth BEFORE you can create a job. Wealth re-distribution isn’t quite the same thing.
Jul 15, 2009 - 10:12 am 14. The Shadow:Just to confuse the solons here is an analysis from PK
“Deficits saved the world
Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs has a new note (no link) responding to claims that government support for the economy is postponing the necessary adjustment. He doesn’t think much of that argument; neither do I. But one passage in particular caught my eye:
The private sector financial balance—defined as the difference between private saving and private
investment, or equivalently between private income and private spending—has risen from -3.6% of GDP in the 2006Q3 to +5.6% in 2009Q1. This 8.2% of GDP adjustment is already by far the biggest in postwar history and is in fact bigger than the increase seen in the early 1930s.
That’s an interesting way to think about what has happened — and it also suggests a startling conclusion: namely, government deficits, mainly the result of automatic stabilizers rather than discretionary policy, are the only thing that has saved us from a second Great Depression.
The following figure makes the argument:
Here I show the private sector surplus and the public sector deficit, both as functions of GDP; the private sector line is upward-sloping because higher GDP means higher income and more savings, the public-sector line is downward-sloping because higher GDP means higher revenues. In equilibrium the private surplus equals the government deficit (not strictly true for any one country if you add in international capital flows, but think of this as a picture for the world economy). To make the figure cleaner I’ve shown an initial position of balance in both sectors, but this isn’t important.
What we’ve had is a sharp increase in the desired private surplus at any given level of GDP, due to a combination of higher personal saving and reduced investment demand. This is shown as an upward shift in the private-surplus curve.
In the 1930s the public sector was very small. As a result, GDP basically had to shrink enough to keep the private-sector surplus equal to zero; hence the fall in GDP labeled “Great Depression”.
This time around, the fall in GDP didn’t have to be as large, because falling GDP led to rising deficits, which absorbed some of the rise in the private surplus. Hence the smaller fall in GDP labeled “Great Recession.”
What Hatzius is saying is that the initial shock — the surge in desired private surplus — was if anything larger this time than it was in the 1930s. This says that absent the absorbing role of budget deficits, we would have had a full Great Depression experience. What we’re actually having is awful, but not that awful — and it’s all because of the rise in deficits. Deficits, in other words, saved the world.
Jul 15, 2009 - 11:19 am 15. Avitar:The prees has been so slow on the uptake that Obama figures he will be walking his daughters down the ailse before they check the numbers.
Jul 15, 2009 - 11:52 am 16. Mike:After all the Great Depression got worse through 1938 but the media still reports that the New Deal helped end the Great Depression I have yet to see a MSM reporter mention that the United States has never recovered from the Depression
“That seems like a wise investment — only $5.25 million of taxpayers’ dollars per job!”
Do you really think that Obama has any concept of how much money it takes to “create” a job? Soon, he will be coming up on the deadline for his “pledge” to create 600,000 jobs this quarter. He simply does not understand that 600,000 jobs is more than twice the number of employees at General Electric.
Obama has no idea that the retail industry is what supported the low wage earners in this country. There is very little that can be done now to support a recovery in the retail sector. You cannot convert retail employees into “green energy” engineers in 1, 2, or even 5 years (maybe not even a decade!)
Time is wasting, and Obama will show us how his hope is blind, instead of audacious.
Jul 15, 2009 - 12:04 pm 17. Obambi on the mound:We live in a “sound bite” society. Most people believe the MSM verbatim as well as whatever the people in office spew. there is very little fact-checking going on, and the Dems have learned to play to this very well. Example? If people had cut the MSM umbilical cord and fact-checked on Obambi, he would have not gotten enough votes to win the election. Many people are like chicks in the nest, staring skyward, waiting to be fed by mommabird MSM . They don’t use the freedoms they have to explore the facts available out there. Hey, but we excel in trivia- and we know a million factoids about our favorite team and star players..or did ya see that last episode of CSI? while Rome burns.Not to say that those pursuits are bad in themselves, we just are preoccupied with what to paint the walls on a building that has wrecking balls poised outside.
Jul 15, 2009 - 12:16 pm 18. Obambi on the mound:Sorry-Last sentence should have been “what color of paint to use on the walls of a building that has wrecking balls poised outside”.
Jul 15, 2009 - 12:19 pm 19. annie:again….Nikita and Karl would be proud…the boy has done them proud
Jul 15, 2009 - 2:34 pm 20. Todd:So the intent of this $787,000,000,000.00 legislation, which the president claimed would “create or save 3.5 to 4 million jobs,” was actually to “create or save” 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days, then hold fast at that number?
That seems like a wise investment — only $5.25 million of taxpayers’ dollars per job!
Hey, I lost my job around the same time they passed the “stimulus,” could I just get my 5 mil up front?
Jul 15, 2009 - 8:01 pm 21. just wondering:Sallie (#12): I’m just another moron, and I’ve been wondering what to do as well, and how about we actually take the US Constitution back as our own?
The second method prescribed is for a Constitutional Convention to be called by two-thirds of the legislatures of the States, and for that Convention to propose one or more amendments. These amendments are then sent to the states to be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions. This route has never been taken, and there is discussion in political science circles about just how such a convention would be convened, and what kind of changes it would bring about. – http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html
Washington’s a lost cause, but maybe we can force enough of the idiots we’ve elected at the state government level to actually do what we the people want, and pass an amendment limiting spending to some percentage of the GDP, or requiring a 3/4 majority if it would increase the deficit, etc.
Jul 15, 2009 - 8:13 pm 22. myth buster:To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours, and a recovery is when Barrack Obama loses his.”
Jul 15, 2009 - 8:25 pm 23. DaveinPhoenix:20. Todd:
-Todd, I have absolute faith that you would spend or invest the $5 million better than any state or federal government. Hang in there, this too shall pass.
Jul 15, 2009 - 9:45 pm 24. David:It’s all NewSpeak – white is black and black is white…
and most of the public seems to be too dumb, self-absorbed or apathetic to care. They can elaborate about American Idol, though.
It amazes me continually that Obama is still so personally popular when he lies so frequently. Remember transparent government – legislation will be posted for 5 days before votes so that the American people can read and understand it – no lobbyists in government? I could go on… The man is a serial liar.
Jul 16, 2009 - 6:34 am 25. Carl Sesar:anton @ 6
“No one in the Administration has a clue about the economy, or economics for that matter. The scariest part is that they really think they know what they’re doing . . . or they are certain that most American are too stupid to see what is happening around them.”
No. The administration knows about the economy and economics, they know what they’re doing, and are correct to think that most Americans don’t see what is happening around them.
You see, the administration deliberately wants to destroy the economy.
Jul 17, 2009 - 12:01 pm 26. Jules:Hey, I saved many jobs today! I went grocery shopping, stopped at the dry cleaners, had lunch out…everyone who made money from me today kept their job because I’m spending my unemployment money. Now I see how this works!
Jul 17, 2009 - 2:04 pm