Obama’s First Year: A Year Of Fuzzy Math

So what are these? It turns out that there are so many examples of "fuzzy math" when it comes to the "stimulus" jobs data, Americans for Tax Reform launched a series called “Stimulus Fuzzy Math”.

 

Some examples included:

 

• In Missouri, a diving company received stimulus dollars to work on a project which had a seven-man team of divers from Kentucky spend four days retrieving a broken steel turbine blade from the bottom of Stockton Lake. The report submitted to the Recovery Board claimed the project “created or saved” 7.5 jobs, but failed to point out that the project duration was four days – and none of the employees working on the project would have lost their job if it hadn’t been for the funding.

• In Indiana, state officials boasted they had claimed 16,000 jobs as a result of the “stimulus”. Except then Indy Star reported that over 13,000 of these jobs already existed.

 

• In Montana, a joint press release from Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester claimed that $1.3 million in federal recovery funding would create 40 new jobs for the Flathead City-County Heath Department. However, the actual employment plans at the Flathead Community Health Center show it adding only two more jobs during the next fiscal year.

 

• About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.

 

• In Michigan, of the 5.2 billion slotted for the state has “created or retained virtually no jobs,” with 75% of stimulus grants going to projects tat created zero or one jobs, at a cost per job of $2.7 million. Also in Michigan, General Motors Co. reported 105 jobs saved or created for a government purchase of 5,000 vehicles but later revised this figure to 0 jobs.

 

• In Georgia, President Barack Obama’s economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

 

• In New Mexico, $27 million of federal money his state received went to nonexistent zip codes, and in Virginia, as much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars went to 14 zip codes that don’t exist

 

 

But a few people are prospering: the “stimulus” package has contributed to the growth of the federal payroll, with the creation of 25,000 government jobs since December of 2008. Assuming that these government workers are GS8 (mid-level) employees, they are paid $4.27 million over their career (Click here for methodology). This equals an increased taxpayer burden of $106,750,000,000.00.