Stimulus Bill - Fact or Farce

Riddle me this, how many jobs did the $787 billion (that magically became $819 billion) emergency stimulus bill actually create? Go research your answer and then come back. I’ll wait right here. Pause… Time passes…

Okay, back with your number? Did you go to Recovery.com to find your answer? Is your number some where around 2.6 million (maybe between 2.1 and 2.8 million)? If you went to President Obama’s Recovery.gov website you will find that he is claiming that his stimulus bill has created (or saved) some 2,679,043 jobs (i.e. 633,189; 608,078; 682,322 and 755,454 jobs for the last four quarters). If accurate the tax payer only paid about $300,000 per job created.

Have you ever wondered how President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid could have created (or saved) 2,679,043 jobs and still have the unemployment rate climb to 9.6 percent?

The answer is simple but not pretty. Once you understand the job counting mechanism you will immediately understand why unemployment is still the highest of the current century despite the 2.6 million jobs supposedly created (or saved).

Here is what President Obama, his administration Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the rest of the Democrats and most of the main stream media are not telling you. The number of jobs created (or saved) is not 2,679,043 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs. The number is lower, much lower. In fact the number is less than half of that amount. Sounds bad right?

In the immortal words of Billy Mays “But wait, there’s more!” If you are gullible enough to believe the bill created 2.6 million jobs then the Democrats will double the deception! That’s right! If you believe the stimulus bill created (or saved) 2,679,043 jobs then you will be excited to learn that the actual number of Full Time Equivalent annual jobs created is actually just (drum roll please) 669,761, That’s right folks! The claimed jobs number is actually inflated by a factor of four!

Are your confused? Do you accept this number? Don’t. Challenge me to back it up. Okay, I accept the challenge. Here is the dirty little secret. The jobs number is based upon the number of jobs created each quarter (520 full time equivalent hours) not 2080 hours. That’s right. The number President Obama and Joe Biden are citing is inflated by a factor of four because each number is the number of jobs created (or saved) each quarter combined – not the total number of jobs created (or saved) each year.

For those of you that doubt me, here is what the government says on its own website:

“For example, if three of the recipient’s employees worked on a Recovery-funded project for a total of 1300 hours in a given quarter, and the recipient defines a full-time schedule as 520 hours per quarter (40 hours per week for 13 weeks), the recipient would report that the “full-time equivalent” (FTE) of 2.5 jobs has been created or retained (1300/520 = 2.5).”

President Obama’s website gets its numbers by adding up all the jobs created (or saved) each quarter. This would be correct if all the jobs lasted a full year – they don’t. The jobs are only for a quarter.

If you think about this for a minute you now understand why unemployment is so high. There have not been 2,679,043 jobs created. At best there have only been 669,761 Full Time Equivalent jobs created for the year. This easily explains why the unemployment rate is still in the 9.5 range despite the Democrat claims that the stimulus bill has created (or saved) some 2.6 million jobs. And this means the average job saved (or created) came at a cost of a little over $1,200,000.00 to the tax payer.

So now you know (in the words of Paul Harvey) “The rest of the story.”