We reported yesterday that the federal government’s Recovery.gov Web site, which purports to track jobs created or saved with stimulus money, was citing new jobs in nonexistent congressional districts. Today a new report from the Government Accountability Office brings news that phantom districts aren’t the only problem. GAO found almost 4,000 reports that showed jobs created or saved but no money received or expended. Those reports represented more than 50,000 jobs. Recovery.gov’s... Click to Read the Full Post
The Obama administration’s Recovery.gov Web site is supposed to compile data on actual, real-life jobs filled by companies and states that have received real money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus). But the site claims that jobs exist in congressional districts that don’t. This is a site, by the way, that says it "allows for the reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse." ABC News reported the discrepancies Nov. 16, pointing out that... Click to Read the Full Post
House Minority Leader John Boehner has again attacked the way his home state is spending its stimulus funds. And again, he’s wrong. At his weekly news conference, Boehner criticized the Ohio Department of Transportation for using millions of dollars in American Recovery and Reconstruction Act money for a project study, rather than for construction: Boehner, July 9: As a matter of fact, [ODOT] took $20 million of stimulus funds to — to do a study of a proposed project in southwest... Click to Read the Full Post
John Boehner, phone home. Or at least check the Ohio Department of Transportation’s highly informative Web site before talking about state road projects on TV. Last week, Rep. Boehner, the House Republican leader who hails from the Buckeye State, released a video featuring a bloodhound purporting to sniff out jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus package that took effect in February – and finding none. Boehner followed that up with a July 5 interview on “Fox News Sunday,”... Click to Read the Full Post
Summary With the economy continuing to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, Republicans are stepping up attacks on President Obama. They claim that the massive "stimulus" spending isn’t working very well. A Republican Party Web site classifies as "fiction" the president’s repeated claim that the spending already has "saved or created" a total of 150,000 jobs, and accuses him of "fuzzy math." The GOP has a point here. The fact is the economy... Click to Read the Full Post
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced on June 1 a radio ad and robo-call campaign against several congressional Republicans for voting against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus bill). However, the attacks don’t tell the whole story. For instance, the ad aimed at Republican Rep. Peter King claim that he "opposed an $800 tax cut and opposed creating or saving 215,000 New York jobs." But King, like many Republicans, never said that. Rather,... Click to Read the Full Post
At President Obama’s April 29 news conference, he claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has "already saved or created over 150,000 jobs." Wait a minute. Isn’t the number of jobs actually plummeting? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy lost more than 1.3 million jobs in the two months after he took office, and it has probably lost at least another half-million in April. The day after Obama spoke, the Department of Labor announced that another... Click to Read the Full Post
Summary A group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights began airing a television ad this week that criticizes government-run health care and falsely suggests Congress wants a British-style system here in the U.S.: The ad neglects to mention that President Obama hasn’t proposed a government-run plan and, in fact, has rejected the idea. It claims that a research council created by the stimulus bill is "the first step in government control over your health care choices."... Click to Read the Full Post
Summary After 100 days in office, we find President Obama is sticking to the facts – mostly. Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He’s used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated... Click to Read the Full Post
Americans United For Change, a liberal labor-funded group, has released a new ad accusing congressional Republicans of opposing "progress." The ad accuses Republicans of voting against children’s health insurance, equal pay for women, economic recovery, middle-class tax cuts and a budget that would lead to "long-term prosperity." We’ve called this group out before for unfounded claims about the Republican agenda, but this ad sticks closer to the truth. Democrats did... Click to Read the Full Post
