Doocy twisted Biden remark to falsely claim administration backtracking on job creation

On the June 15 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy falsely claimed that comments Vice President Joe Biden made during a June 14 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press constituted the Obama administration backtracking from its stated goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Doocy stated, "[O]ver the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about the very rosy projection that if they passed the stimulus, 3.5 million jobs would be created or saved, and yesterday, Joe said that's probably closer to 600,000." In fact, the figure Biden cited is not at odds with the administration's prediction. During the interview, Biden said the administration predicted that the stimulus package would create or save 600,000 jobs "in the next 100 days"; when Obama signed the recovery act, he stated that it "will save or create more than 3.5 million jobs over the next two years."

During his Meet the Press appearance, host David Gregory asked Biden: "A hundred days after it was signed, the president said 150,000 jobs had been created or saved. Can you explain where that number comes from?" Biden responded:

BIDEN: Yes, look, there's an econometric model that economists have been using for decades to correlate the economic circumstances of the nation with the creation of jobs. It is a model no one has questioned. It's a model the Council of Economic Advisers have used to come up with that 150,000 jobs. But in fact -- and by the way, I think we're going to create another 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days, because, now, this thing is beginning to roll out.

We actually have let these contracts, the governors with -- who have money for road contracts and so on, they're now just putting spades in the ground, just hiring people. And so, I don't know anybody who's argued with the model that we've used. But the key here for us is not whether or not we're going to argue about how many jobs, you know, there are out there; it's whether or not are we, in fact, producing employment for people? And it's undeniable.

From the June 15 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: Joe Biden over the weekend revealed he would like to be president. How great is that? He also revealed that while they rushed that whole stimulus package through the House and the Senate so that we could start spending all that money -- and we're still waiting on that -- apparently people overestimated just exactly what good it would do and how many jobs it would save. Listen to the vice president just yesterday.

BIDEN [video clip]: No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse, but it was -- we took the mainstream model as to what we thought and everyone else thought the unemployment rate would be. ... Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed.

GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): I don't think everyone guessed wrong. There were plenty of people who came out against the stimulus package. So I'm not sure that that's an accurate statement that everyone got it wrong that unemployment would, in fact, go to 9.4 percent, and many economists believe it will continue to go higher.

At this point, I'm also wondering if the president will be calling the vice president in today for a very important meeting and say that we need to get on the same page when we talk about the stimulus, because I'm not so sure that Obama would want Joe Biden saying that the stimulus has not produced as many jobs as they thought it would.

BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): And the problem with the stimulus package is we needed it right away. We needed the $787 billion right away or we were going to -- the whole country was just going to go into the side of a mountain. We've only spent 44 billion of the 787 billion. Now, the majority of the country, according to a Rasmussen poll, does not want us to spend the rest.

DOOCY: Right.

KILMEADE: They've had it. And there's two areas that Barack Obama is hitting under 50 percent, and that is American people's confidence in Barack Obama with the budget deficit -- 48 percent disapprove of the way he's handling the budget deficit --

DOOCY: Right.

KILMEADE: -- and just about the same amount disapprove of the way he's handling spending. And the stimulus package plays into that --

DOOCY: Sure.

KILMEADE: -- and that could be trouble for the White House.

DOOCY: See, I think the White House sent Joe Biden out over the weekend to say, look, we're not going to have the president deliver the bad news. We're going to have Joe Biden do it. And keep in mind -- and Gretch talked about the unemployment, you know, pass it -- it'll never get past north of 8. Now, it's at 9.4 percent. But over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about the very rosy projection that if they passed the stimulus, 3.5 million jobs would be created or saved, and yesterday, Joe said that's probably closer to 600,000.

But keep in mind, that metric of jobs saved does not exist. The Labor Department doesn't track it, and we've heard from a number of commentators and former members of administrations, they say that number is just made up. It's political spin.

From the June 14 edition of NBC News' Meet the Press:

GREGORY: I want to come back to the issue of foreign policy, a lot to discuss there, but I want to go to the other big test for this administration, and that is, of course, the economy. You are in charge of monitoring the stimulus --

BIDEN: That's right.

GREGORY: -- $800 billion stimulus. A hundred days after it was signed, the president said 150,000 jobs had been created or saved.

BIDEN: That's right.

GREGORY: Can you explain where that number comes from?

BIDEN: Yes, look, there's an econometric model that economists have been using for decades to correlate the economic circumstances of the nation with the creation of jobs. It is a model no one has questioned. It's a model the Council of Economic Advisers have used to come up with that 150,000 jobs. But in fact -- and by the way, I think we're going to create another 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days, because, now, this thing is beginning to roll out.

We actually have let these contracts, the governors with -- who have money for road contracts and so on, they're now just putting spades in the ground, just hiring people. And so, I don't know anybody who's argued with the model that we've used. But the key here for us is not whether or not we're going to argue about how many jobs, you know, there are out there; it's whether or not are we, in fact, producing employment for people? And it's undeniable.