On-screen text: “White House Smokescreen: Claims They Created or Saved 640,329 Jobs”

From the 7 a.m. ET hour of the December 4 edition of Fox & Friends:

Fact: CBO estimated the stimulus created 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs

In a November report, the CBO stated:

CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher, than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA (see Table 1). Those ranges are intended to reflect the uncertainty of such estimates and to encompass most economists' views on the effects of fiscal stimulus. [CBO's Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output as of September 2009, November 2009]

Fact: Nonpartisan analyses found total employment figures would be worse without Recovery Act

According to impartial, nonpartisan analyses of key economic indicators since the first quarter of 2009 conducted by several companies specializing in macroeconomic forecasting, the stimulus package boosted both the gross domestic product (GDP) and total employment figures relative to how those metrics would have fared in the absence of that legislation. According to The New York Times, such “dispassionate analysts” have produced a “consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.” [The New York Times, 11/21/09]

Fact: CEPR's Baker said WH is “simply applying rules of thumbs that have been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations”

In an October 31 blog post, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote of the “cottage industry developing among political reporters trying to investigate whether the Obama administration's claims on jobs created or 'saved' by the stimulus are true”:

This is an exercise in extreme silliness. It will be almost impossible to identify the vast majority of jobs that are created or saved by the stimulus because this would require a full knowledge of the flow of spending from tens of thousands of governmental units and the consumption decisions of 150 million households. However, there are fairly well-recognized economic relationships (outside of the University of Chicago) that allow the administration to produce reasonably good estimates of the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus.

The administration is not using any hocus pocus in producing these job numbers. It is simply applying rules of thumbs that have been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations as well as impartial bodies like the Congressional Budget Office. If these reporters want to investigate the Obama administration's actions, their time would be much better spent looking at its ties to the financial industry where they could well be some substantive issues.

btw, any reporter who puts the word “saved” in quotes should be fired immediately. It reflects either ungodly stupidity or pathetic partisanship. Every month, 2 million workers are dismissed by their employer. If this number can be reduced by just one-tenth, then net job creation will be increased by 200,000 a month or 2.4 million a year. Anyone who implies that there is something peculiar about efforts to reduce the numbers of jobs lost by “saving” jobs is badly misleading readers.

Earlier: Fox News host Beck falsely claimed “saved or created category” is “make-believe”

As Media Matters for America has previously noted, despite the CBO's estimates, Fox News host Glenn Beck declared the “saved or created category” to be “make-believe,” adding, “it will soon become apparent that the jobs are not being saved or created.”