California Conservative

This morning, Vice President Biden appeared on Meet the Depressed. During his interview, he made a statement that needs immediate refutation. Here’s what he said:

Vice President Joe Biden says “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the economic stimulus.

Biden says the economy was worse off than anyone thought when officials estimated the number of jobs that could be saved or created under the administration’s $787 billion stimulus spending.

Biden says White House economists used standard formulas to estimate that 3.5 million jobs would be saved or created under the plan Congress passed earlier this year.

Vice President Biden isn’t telling the truth. Lots of people, including the CBO, predicted that ARRA wouldn’t create the amount of jobs that the administration said it would. Far from “everyone got it wrong”, it seems more like the administration is the only people who got it wrong.

Then again, that isn’t surprising because the administration has misled people on a wide range of things thus far. Let’s recall that President Obama said that Caterpillar would rehire a bunch of workers if his stimulus plan was passed:

“Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off,” Obama said today in Peoria.

Minutes after President Obama left, “Jim” set the record straight:

But when asked today if the stimulus could do that, Owens said, “I think, realistically, no. The honest reality is we’re probably going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again.”

It’s becoming a habit of this administration to stretch projections. Let’s remember the graphic from King’s post:

People have been critical of the Obama administration’s calculations since almost the first day. It’s only recently that the Obama administration has admitted that they’ve been badly wrong. In his announcement that his administration would be accelerating the spending of ARRA funds, President Obama promised this newest measure would create or save 600,000 jobs. That’s drawing criticism, too:

Several economists said Monday the economy is unlikely to see much boost from the stimulus before next year.

“It takes time to organize projects, to get the bids in, the funds out and the work started,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.

Then there’s this:

Some analysts believe the White House is still not being realistic, that Obama will be lucky if any real job creation from his recovery effort is seen by the end of the year, let alone the employment explosion he predicts. “I think these estimates are overly optimistic,” said Arpitha Bykere, a senior analyst with RGE Monitor.

In other words, there are lots of skeptics of this administration’s predictions. It’s nothing more complicated than that. Vice President Biden can try spinning it like everyone’s getting it wrong. The reality is, though, that it’s the Obama administration that’s getting it wrong.

Technorati Tags: Forecasts, Joe Biden, Job Growth, President Obama, Spin, Jim Owens, Caterpillar, Economy

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Economy, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.