Story of Jobs: Administration Faces Credibility Gap, as Talk Grows of New Stimulus

For those of you who thought that Change meant that we would actually see some transparency perhaps you could add this little note by the old adage "the more things change. the more things stay the same."

This little goodie was pass along by my dear friend Christine. ABC News' (and not FOX for a change) Rick Klein Reports on the current state of affairs that the Obama administration faces as their credibility is questioned over inaccuracies in the current job creation reports. As you all might remember part of the stimulus package provisions laid out that a specific amount was to go toward funding job creation.

The problem again this week is salesmanship -- and how the administration can get the public to trust its numbers when some of them are so laughably, horribly wrong.

It's not just an exercise in spin: This debate rages while talk starts on Capitol Hill of another stimulus measure -- except it can't be called a "stimulus" this time. (If you have to ask why, you aren't paying attention.)

The administration asked for this -- dare we say, literally asked for this -- with promises of actual job totals and new accountability and oversight mechanisms, all with Sheriff Joe Biden at the helm.

On inconsistencies in job numbers, the sheriff speaks. Vice President Joe Biden, on "The Daily Show" Tuesday: "Look, the bottom line is that we do check [data sent to the federal government]. But what happens is the initial report comes in cold. We don't -- of the 130,000 reports that come in as to what they did with the money, we're now going through it."

"We have now, of that Recovery Act, we've been in business seven, eight months. The one thing you haven't seen is that old thing about the dog that hasn't barked. You haven't seen these big, wasteful projects. No one's come up with anything where we've gone out there and spent $2 million on something that didn't exist," Biden said, per ABC's Steven Portnoy.

For now, congressional districts that don't exist -- there are more of them cited at Recovery.gov than the genuine article -- will suffice.

The Recovery Board says it can't and won't certify the numbers posted at Recovery.gov -- and can't even tell lawmakers who's failed to report jobs data, since there's no "master list" yet. "No, I am not able to make this certification," Earl Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, writes in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., provided to The Note.

Issa, in a Washington Examiner op-ed: "Apparently, somebody is messing with Joe. Or even worse, Joe seems to be messing with us. ... The manifest inaccuracies in the data the Obama administration uses to justify its economic policies constitutes the promulgation of inaccurate and misleading information by the federal government."

Karl reports: "Officials tell ABC News, so far, they have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants."

For the record, there are 435 real congressional districts: "Researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity found 440 ‘phantom districts' listed on Recovery.gov, consuming $6.4 billion and creating or saving nearly 30,000 jobs," the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter writes.

Should they have counted on this? "It is worth asking whether the administration's problem stems primarily from its decision to provide the numbers in the first place," Alec MacGillis reports in The Washington Post. "As it is, the administration has left itself open to near-daily assaults on the credibility of the jobs numbers. Finding flaws in the data is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, and reporters have been all too happy to fire away -- first reporting the numbers with fanfare when they are announced, despite all their obvious shortcomings, and then, days or weeks later, reporting that they are not entirely sound."

With his poll numbers slipping to below 50% this week the President is really going to need to wrangle in some of the problem areas and come up with more feasible solutions to handling the economic crisis and unemployment.

In all fairness if we want our economy to return we might want to consider pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I mean if these people can't offer up solutions for themselves or even contribute to the process then why are we mixed up with them in the first place?

The time for us being the BIG BROTHER of the world needs to end and we need to take care of things at home. We need to sort out the mess we have in our own back yard before we go and ask somebody else to allow us to manage their gardening.

For more information on the administrations numbers you can find the original article at the ABC link below;

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/story-of-jobs-administration-faces-credibility-gap-as-talk-grows-of-new-stimulus.html