White House Stimulus Saves and Creates Frauds

The latest claim from President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors about the "stimulus" act came out Jan. 13, and now we are to believe that 1.5-2 million jobs have been "created or saved" by the stimulus during 2009, with more than half of its grants and tax cuts allocated.

The claim is a transparent enough lie considering that employers have eliminated more than 5 million jobs, net, during Obama's first year in office, and 2.5 million more workers have dropped out of the labor force during that time.

And the White House "saved or created jobs" formula has already been pretty thoroughly debunked by investigators and reporters checking out the claims of such job creation by stimulus-act projects last Fall.

But now, Peter Orszag, Obama's Budget Director and his "Igor" of healthcare euthanasia, has stepped in to "save" the exposed stimulus jobs fraud, and "create" a bigger one. Orszag issued an order to all Federal agencies in December, "changing the guidelines" of counting jobs "to prevent the kinds of errors and confusion that occurred when the first counts came out in October."

Orszag's memo used the simple Pinocchio principle. Agencies were ordered, for any project, state or local agency, or company that got stimulus-act aid, to count all the jobs at that location as "saved or created" by the stimulus act!

For example, when Chrysler reported a $53 million contract to build 3,000 government vehicles last Fall, it listed zero jobs because it used existing employees to fill the orders; but under Orszag's new rule, it would list the total number of its production workers. The California corrections department has reported 18,000 jobs "saved or created" due to receiving stimulus money; it was planning to lay off only 5,000 officers, but now stimulus money is helping it keep all its employees on payroll, according to the "Orszag principle" of job-creation!