White House Fires Back At Recovery Act Critics
By Robert Brodsky
The Obama administration is hitting back against charges that Recovery Act jobs figures are unreliable and overstated.
In a post this morning on the White House blog, Ed DeSeve, a special advisor to the president for the stimulus, argues that while some relatively minor errors have been discovered, they do not change the "fundamental conclusions" that between 600,000 and 700,000 direct jobs were saved or created in its first seven months.
"It would be great if every report filed was correct the first time, on time, and contained no errors," DeSeve wrote. "But that's not realistic when 130,000 reports are being filed in a 10 day period. It would be great if the reviewers at the federal agencies could have found all the mistakes in the 20 days they had to do the job, gotten the reports back to the recipients to be fixed, and reposted - but again, that isn't realistic."
DeSeve also made a little news, verifying for the first time that 10 percent of stimulus recipients have yet to file any reports.
Earlier this week, ABC News discovered recipient reports which state that jobs were created in congressional districts that do not exist. Other media accounts have found anecdotal overcounting of jobs.
Government Executive reported last week that job totals may have been systematically undercounted as well.
Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has seized on a document which shows that the Recovery Board and the Office of Management and Budget purged 12 questionable recipients reports which claimed that a total of 60,000 jobs had been saved or created because they appeared unbelievable.
Issa sent a letter to Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney on Monday calling for an asterisk or footnote on Recovery.gov alerting visitors that the data is unreliable. "I am concerned that the RATB web site may be spreading inaccurate and misleading information to the American people," the letter said.
The dispute will come to a head Thursday as the Oversight Committee conducts a hearing on the stimulus implementation.
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Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
Bud Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 1:56 PMIt's a little ironic that this post directly follows one about probable inaccuracies in private sector self-reporting. That earlier post opined that "sometimes employers lie...incentive to avoid fines," etc., and that "verification should be a principle for self-reported data."
In the situation covered in the instant blog, should not that same principle be followed? Is it completely out of the question that there could be political incentives, as opposed to the financial incentives in the case of the private sector, to make the numbers paint a more positive picture? Do I even need to pose the question?
EJC in ATL Posted Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:54 AMI commend my leadership for helping put some Americans back to work. I just hope these where private sector jobs that supply goods and services because if they are not and these are in or related to government work or temp infrastructure work this may create a problem collecting enough taxes to pay for all this. Why is my leadership both parties so hell bent on NOT!!! bringing bluecollar or whitecollar or any job back to our soil. I dont get it! Can someone explain the benefits of shipping our industrial base overseas and how that is to help the American people help me to understand please! I'm not the smartest guy but for the life of me I cant figure this one out????? We need taxpayers so we can fight the wars others cant so we can feed the people of the world who cant feed themselves so we can help other countries how do we plan to do all of these things when fewer and fewer people are working and paying taxes. Again not real smart guy here but I cant see how this is going to be a good thing for us in the near future.
LC Posted Wednesday, November 18, 2009 9:52 AMIf they have to put an asterick on that website, then they should put one on every government website that gathers data. They all have an element of inaccuracy. Just look up contracts - there are many errors that get entered into systems that record them.
MidwestContracting Posted Wednesday, November 18, 2009 10:18 AM