Kudos to the Washington Examiner. They’re keeping tabs on the Obama administration’s phony stimulus claims. They’ve set up an interactive map that documents instances of government exaggeration-- or lies --over how many jobs were “created or saved” by the $787 billion stimulus package.
The Examiner has found that just over 10 percent of the jobs supposedly “created or saved” are bogus. I’m not surprised.
Here’s the White House’s reaction, or explanation, or excuse making.
Here are some particularly egregious examples from the Examiner:
Sacramento Bee: The California State University system received $268.5 million in stimulus funds and claimed that the money allowed them to save over 26,000 jobs. But when pressed, the University officials admitted they weren't really going to lay off half their workforce, and that in fact, few or none of these jobs would have been lost without the stimulus. "This is not really a real number of people," a CSU spokesman said. "It's like a budget number."
The New York Times: A $1,000 grant to purchase a single lawn mower [in Arkansas] was credited with saving 50 jobs.
Tacoma News-Tribune: Of the 34,500 jobs allegedly saved or created by the stimulus in Washington State, 24,000 belong to state teachers already under contract to finish out the school year, whose jobs were never in jeopardy ….
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A joint venture [in Oklahoma] that received six military contracts counted the same 10 jobs six times.
Chicago Tribune: [S]timulus funds were said to have saved the equivalent of 382 full-time teaching jobs -- 142 more than the [Dolton, Ill.] district actually has.
Chicago Tribune: The city claimed to have saved the jobs of 473 teachers with its $4.7 million education stimulus grant. The [North Chicago] district employs only 290 teachers.
Greenville News: "The Greenville Housing Authority ‘saved or created’ 118 jobs by use of federal stimulus money, according to the Obama administration. The agency only has 35 employees."
Even if the jobs really were “saved or created”, that’s not real job creation. There is no new wealth created. All the stimulus did was shift resources to stimulus recipients, at a hidden cost. That money would have been spent or invested privately by other people if it hadn’t been taxed away. It’s Bastiat’s broken window fallacy in a nutshell.
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