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"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job"

FROM FOX NEWS

HEAD: White House Overstates Number of Stimulus Jobs Created, Reviews Find

LEAD (OR LEDE, IF YOU PREFER): The reviews raise fresh questions about the
process the Obama administration is using to tout the success of its
economic recovery plan -- one in which half the money has been spent so far.


The Obama administration appears to be using fuzzy math to count the number
of jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus package, according to two
analyses that show counters included pay raises and hours worked as actual
jobs.

The government's claim that the controversial spending bill led to 640,000
jobs could be overstated by at least 20,000 because recipients of federal
grants and contracts appear to have made mistakes when estimating the number
of jobs that have been saved or created, according to a Wall Street Journal
analysis.

And an Associated Press review found that more than two-thirds of 14,506
jobs credited to the stimulus under a popular federal preschool program were
overstated because pay increases for existing workers were counted as jobs
saved.

The reviews raise fresh questions about the process the Obama administration
is using to tout the success of its economic recovery plan -- one in which
half the money has been spent so far.

Last week's stimulus report claimed 640,000 jobs saved or created by the
economic recovery plan so far. Those jobs came from 156,614 federal
contracts, grants and loans awarded to more than 62,000 recipients, worth a
total of $215 billion.

Obama has promised the stimulus would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the
end of next year, and the data released Friday represented the first head
count toward that goal.

The Journal review found that some colleges and universities counted every
part-time student's work-study position as a full-time job. And some
low-income housing landlords whose longtime contracts with the federal
government were funded by the stimulus this year reported a total of 6,463
employees as jobs saved.

Dozens of recipients claimed to have created or saved at least one job with
less than $2,000 in stimulus money, for a total of at least 3,300 jobs,
according to the Journal review.

The Associated Press found that more than 250 other community agencies in
the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay
raises, pay for training and continuing education, extend employee work
hours or buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

Most of the inflated figures were like those cited in the 935 saved jobs
reported by the Southwest Georgia Community Action in Moultrie, Ga. The
agency, like hundreds of others collecting Head Start money, claimed all its
existing employees' jobs were saved because they received a pay raise with
the stimulus cash.

Similar claims led to overstating by more than 9,300 the number of jobs
saved with more than $323 million in stimulus money distributed by the
Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the
AP's review found.

Republicans have challenged the job-saving claim, saying there was no
concrete way to tally jobs "saved."

Ed DeSeve, a senior adviser to Obama on implementing the stimulus, told the
Journal Tuesday in a statement that the administration knew the reports were
not "100 percent accurate" but that the plan was supposed "to create jobs,
not count them."

He added that even the "approximate" total pointed to "tremendous
progress."

Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John
Boehner, said counting raises as part of the inflated job count "is more
than ridiculous."

The AP's new review focused only on the money distributed by the
Administration for Children and Families and was not an assessment of the
money handled by dozens of other federal programs and other job claims made
in the new stimulus report.

The AP's types of accounting errors were found in an earlier review of
stimulus jobs that the Obama administration said was misleading because most
of the government's job-counting mistakes were being fixed in the new data.

The administration acknowledged overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS
program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery
office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data "to
determine how and if it will be counted."

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS
spokesman Luis Rosero said.
*******************
Huhhhhhhh????? Now that's tap dancing.

"The American people are now suspicious of not only the lawmakers, but the
process they hide behind to do their work,"--Michael Franc, president of
government relations/The Heritage Foundation

Dionysus

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