[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

No they haven't (prove me wrong).

Lets go back to Nov 09 and start here. From the NYT:

Reports Show Conflicting Number of Jobs Attributed to Stimulus Money

Those two extremes illustrate the difficulties in trying to figure out just how many jobs can be attributed to the $787 billion stimulus program. Last week the Obama administration released reports from more than 130,000 recipients of stimulus money in which they claimed to have saved or created more than 640,000 jobs, but a review of those reports shows that some are simply wrong, while others contain apparently subjective estimates.

computer analysis by The New York Times of government reports showed that at least 30,000 of the jobs were being claimed in highway, street and bridge construction, and at least 14,000 were with transit agencies. The analysis found that the $5 billion push to weatherize homes, which was delayed in many states because of uncertainty over how much money the workers should be paid, had yielded only a little over 5,000 jobs so far, nearly half of which were in Ohio.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/us/05stimulus.html

The Obama administration has claimed that stimulus money has created or saved over 1 million new jobs. But with a U.S. national unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, it seems as though some people just weren’t buying it.
In the ABC News report, reporter Johnathan Karl dug deep into the data available on recovery.gov and the results were surprising to say the least. Among the inconsistencies are the following:
• Reports of jobs created in non-existent districts from virtually every U.S. state.
• Agencies that simply used the stimulus money to provide raises for their employees and counting those as saved jobs.
• Stimulus money that was used by agencies however no jobs were created. This is the case in Statesboro, GA where a nursing home used $243,500 of stimulus money to renovate its facilities yet reported that no jobs were created.
• Erroneous reporting of new jobs by agencies that now admit the jobs that have not even begun yet.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/282301

"In late October, the administration reported that the first recipients of stimulus grants, contracts or loans created or saved more than 640,000 jobs. Recipients of tax breaks and aid such as unemployment insurance are not required to report, so the job numbers cover only about $47 billion of the $173 billion spent by Sept. 30. USA TODAY was among those that found examples of errors in that data, such as a Texas housing authority mistakenly reporting 450 jobs created by a $26,000 roofing project that actually employed six people."

This isn't the first report we've seen like this. How many will it take before the administration acknowledges that the stimulus has been an abject failure? That wasn't a serious question. This administration will NEVER acknowledge that it just wasted nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money.

The story continues: "The acting head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Gene Dodaro, told the committee his investigators found 3,978 reports where recipients reported creating a total of 58,386 jobs without spending any money. Another 9,247 reports covering $965 million in spending listed no jobs created or saved, Dodaro said."

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...obs.html?cat=9

Now fast forward to Feb 2010:

The CNN Fact Check Desk found that:

– Last November, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were created through the third quarter, but said "it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."
– Also in November, the Government Accountability Office found "significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed."
– Last December, The White House Office of Management and Budget changed its guidance for stimulus recipients. Instead of asking recipients to report the amount of jobs created or saved with stimulus money, the Office asked recipients to report the amount of jobs "funded" by stimulus money.

Bottom Line: The White House-reported figures on jobs that were created under the stimulus plan are not specific enough to be deemed reliable.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...id=FVXnfhW30kg