Scott Spiegel

“‘Saved or created’ has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs…

“[T]he inability to measure Mr. Obama’s jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one—not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics—actually measures ‘jobs saved.’ As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama’s jobs claims are ‘based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs.’ Nice work if you can get away with it…

“‘You created a situation where you cannot be wrong,’ said [Max Baucus,] Montana Democrat. ‘If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.’”

We can play that game, too: Enhanced interrogation techniques “saved or created” hundreds of thousands of American lives.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451592762396883.html

Related posts:

1. Spanish Report: ‘Green Jobs’ Agenda Destroys Net Jobs “[I]n March, one of Spain’s leading universities, Universidad Rey Juan...
2. Lott’s Numbers: Obama’s Top 2 Most Outrageous Health Care Myths “Two claims are made all the time in the health...
3. Terence Corcoran: More Evidence of Media Thuggery Against Toyota “We now have new evidence that the campaign against Toyota...
4. NewsBusters: ABC Offers Skeptical Take on Obama’s Stimulus Claims; CBS, NBC Uncritical Thank God for Jake Tapper! http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2009/05/29/abc-offers-skeptical-take-obama-stimulus-claims-cbs-nbc-ignore ...
5. WSJ: The Pelosi Jobs Tax “Even many Democrats are revolting against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 5.4%...