Rove falsely claims Biden's stimulus numbers "don't match up"

Rove claims Biden's "own numbers don't match up"

From the July 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

ROVE: I love it, he says we've got 3 million jobs. On his own website, he says the recovery bill has funded, that is to say has paid money out to affect 634,000 jobs. Not created them, not saved them, but just funded them. And so, where's -- you know even his own numbers don't match up.

In fact, Rove is confusing recipient reports with more detailed economic analysis of Recovery Act

Recovery.gov: 682,370 jobs directly funded by stimulus in first quarter of 2010. Recovery.gov states that recipients of stimulus dollars have reported that 682,370 jobs were directly funded by the Recovery Act during the first quarter of 2010. Recipient reports are collected every quarter and calculate the number of jobs created or saved "by taking the total number of Recovery Act funded hours worked in a quarter, and dividing it by the number of hours of a full-time schedule in a quarter as defined by the Recipient." According to Recovery.gov:

The recipient reports contain information on projects for the specific quarter for which they were filed. Although the overall spending figures are cumulative, the jobs figures are not and represent only the number of full-time equivalent jobs that were funded by Recovery money during the quarter covered by the latest recipient report.

CBO: Recipient reports reflect "abut one-sixth" of Recovery Act spending. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stated in its May estimate of the Recovery Act impact that "Recipients reported that ARRA funded almost 700,000 full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs during the first quarter of 2010. Such reports, however, do not provide a comprehensive estimate of the law's impact on employment in the United States." CBO stated that "a more comprehensive analysis" is required since:

First, some of the reported jobs might have existed in the absence of the stimulus package, with employees working on the same activities or other activities. Second, the reports filed by recipients measure only the jobs created by employers who received ARRA funding directly or by their immediate subcontractors (so-called primary and secondary recipients), not by lower-level subcontractors. Third, the reports do not attempt to measure the number of jobs that may have been created or retained indirectly, as greater income for recipients and their employees boosted demand for products and services. Fourth, the recipients' reports cover only certain appropriations made in ARRA, which encompass about one-sixth of the total amount spent by the government or conveyed through tax reductions in ARRA during the first quarter; the reports do not measure the effects of other provisions of the stimulus package, such as tax cuts and transfer payments (including unemployment insurance payments) to individuals.

CEA: There are no recipient reports for many parts of Recovery Act. As the Council of Economic Advisers explains in its quarterly report on the Recovery Act, the job impact of stimulus tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits is not captured in the recipient reports:

It is obviously not possible to identify specific jobs associated with the Recovery Act for the types of stimulus, such as individual tax cuts and extended unemployment insurance benefits, that support spending on a broad range of goods and services produced by a wide range of firms. Largely for that reason, there are no recipient reports associated with the components of the Recovery Act that consist of tax reductions, including the Making Work Pay tax credit, and with many categories of spending, including unemployment insurance benefits and aid to states under the temporary Medicaid FMAP increase.

Job impact estimates range from 1.4 million to 3.6 million, according to CEA. CEA estimated that as of the second quarter of 2010, the Recovery Act, "has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.5 and 3.6 million." The CEA report also included a chart of independent and private analysts' estimates of the Recovery Act's impact on employment:

AP: "[G]rowing body of independent economic analysis suggests the law has boosted jobs." A July 14 Associated Press article about the White House's stimulus figures stated that while "exactly how many jobs" the Recovery Act has created "is a matter of dispute," "a growing body of independent economic analysis suggests the law has boosted jobs and kept people off the unemployment line."