Obama Adminstration Creates New Report to Make Numbers Fit

The Obama administration is having some difficulty with the economic projections they used to sell the stimulus bill, so they've decided to rewrite their projections. The administration projected that the unemployment rate would peak at 8%, it is now at 8.9%. This would lead many reasonable people to think that that the stimulus package has not yet been successful at creating jobs. Hence the Obama administration has written a new economic report. USA Today article White House defends 3.5M job forecast states...

The new report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers offers more details about the projected impact of the $787 billion stimulus package, which Obama signed into law in February. The figure of 3.5 million jobs saved or created, the report says, is the difference between the projected number of jobs during the last three months of 2010 with the stimulus and the projected number of jobs without if there had been no stimulus plan.

The report also offers a new measure of the stimulus law's economic effects: 6.8 million additional job-years between the signing of the legislation and the end of 2012. A job-year represents one job held for one year.

Christina Romer, Obama's top economic adviser, said the administration's goal has been to come up with realistic estimates, not to manipulate the numbers for political purposes. "Accuracy has always been the main thing, not the political back-and-forth," Romer said in an interview Saturday.

Beyond the Obama administration need for 'new math', the AP's article STIMULUS WATCH: Early road aid leaves out neediest reports that areas hardest hit by the economic downturn are receiving less stimulus aid that lesser affected regions.

Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama's plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP's review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower...

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...The early trend seen in the AP analysis runs counter to expectations raised by Obama, that road and infrastructure money from the historic $787 billion stimulus plan would create jobs in areas most devastated by layoffs and plant closings. Transportation money, he said, would mean paychecks for "folks looking for work" and "folks who want to work."

The budget deficit is expected to exceed $1,800,000,000,000 this year, and there has been no sign by this administration that they see huge deficits as a problem. This leaves many wondering how massive inflation will be avoided, and wondering how much number shuffling will be needed in order to make this gratuitous government spending look wise.