White House: Your Concerns About Jobs Are “Petty”
During Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday, he claimed that the “stimulus” bill has been a continuous success. He attempted to reassure the American people by explaining that it had “saved” millions of jobs so far.
Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year. The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That’s right – the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill.
Due to the White House’s ever-changing job statistics, it has become nearly impossible to keep track of how many jobs the “stimulus” has supposedly “created.” Three officials from the Obama administration interviewed earlier this week had inconsistent information about how much of an impact the “stimulus” has had on job creation.
Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace asserted that:
Just last quarter, we finally saw the first positive economic job growth in more than a year, largely as a result of the recovery plan that’s put money back into our economy, that saved or created 1.5 million jobs.
David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama, on CNN’s State of the Union believed that the “stimulus” had created considerably more jobs:
created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.
Valerie Jerrett, Senior Advisor to Obama, on NBC’s Meet the Press had a significantly lower estimate of the number of jobs “saved”:
The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs.
Apparently, the Obama administration cannot agree on which misleading job statistic to use during interviews. The vast differences in these job statistics would leave any concerned person asking a variety of questions. Since Americans have invested billions of taxpayer dollars into the “stimulus”, they should have every right to know how exactly these “saved” jobs are being calculated and the accuracy of this data. According to White House spokesman Bill Burton, these reasonable questions should be deemed “petty.”
Talk show host Bill Wills in Cleveland interviewed Bill Burton on the air:
WILLS: And finally Mr. Burton, on the Sunday shows, there were three different answers from the White House on jobs created out of the stimulus. Have you guys gotten together on that number yet?
BURTON: I have to say this is one of the more petty things that I’ve heard brought up in the last couple of days.
The range of the job creation data presented by the Obama administration is over one million. To the roughly estimated 15 million Americans out of work, the discrepancy of one million jobs does not seem petty. It’s time for the White House to be truthful and consistent–the “stimulus” has failed and zero jobs have been created due to the massive spending bill.
