The Obama administration has received a lot of criticism for the promise to save or create X amount of jobs.  Since putting the stimulus in place, the Obama administration has put forth several claims of the number of saved jobs thanks to the stimulus.

Most economists take issue with the term “saved jobs” as there isn’t  a reliable way to calculate how many jobs weren’t lost due to a particular policy.

It is now coming to light that the Obama administration includes employees who receive pay raises in the number of saved jobs.

The AP found that 9,300 “saved jobs” at the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services were really just employees that received raises.

According to the HHS spokesman, Luis Rosero, “If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job”.  The problem is that many “news” organizations report these numbers as truth.

The AP found other issues in the  Obama Administration’s claims of “saved jobs”.  North Chicago received $4.7 million for schools and claim that 473 teaching jobs were saved.  However, the North Chicago school district only employs 290 teachers.

With this type of logic, President Bush can claim that he stopped Iraq from attacking Israel with 10 nuclear bombs.  Just think how much worse things would have been had we not invaded Iraq…

On Friday, the labor department reported that unemployment rose to a 26 year high of 9.7 percent.

Hotair.com has a great post that shows the following chart that shows what the Obama administration predicted that unemployment would be with and without the stimulus.

This begs the question of how good is the Obama administration at predicting economic trends.  Several months ago, they put out the chart showing what would happen with and without the stimulus.  Within a month of the chart being created, it was wrong.  This is compounded by the fact that according to the administration, doing nothing would have been better than passing the stimulus.

Vice President Biden was out telling the public on Thursday that things would have been worse and that the stimulus has saved hundreds of thousands of jobs.  This same logic could be used to say that the stimulus cost us all the millions of jobs that we would have created if we did something different.

The fact is that massive government spending and doubling the deficit and national debt doesn’t help the economy in the long run and can be ineffective in the short run.

The next argument will be that the stimulus needs more time since over 80% of the money hasn’t been spent.  An interesting conspiracy theory would be that the congress is holding the spending until 2010 to get a bump in the economy prior to the 2010 elections.

Eventually the government will learn that giving us money doesn’t help us, but letting us keep more of the money we earn will help the economy.

This seems somewhat contrary to the pitch we received earlier this year.  Earlier this year, the President said that we had to pass the stimulus NOW or else the economy would slide into a depression and unemployment spike.  We were told that passing the stimulus would mean the unemployment would stay at or below 8%.

Since the passing of the stimulus, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost every month and unemployment has reach 9.5%, the highest it has been in over 25 years.

Obama’s economic council argued that a failure to pass Porkulus would drive unemployment to 8.8% in the near term.  Passing Porkulus would keep it at 8% or below this year. 

We were told that the money would go to “shovel ready” projects, that would jump start the economy.  However, it seems that most of the money has gone to relieve some of the gaps in state budgets.

According to a post at Hotair, had the congress told the American people that the stimulus was merely a 50 state bailout, it would have never passed.

The President is now saying that the stimulus was designed to work over 2 years and that the impacts were not meant to be seen immediately.   This is different than what we heard earlier this year.

The President also says that many critics are judging the stimulus a failure without offering any alternative plans.  However, there were several alternative plans offered up in the house and senate that were blocked from reaching a vote.  It seems that the leadership in congress did not want to discuss bills that cut taxes and spending in 2009.

Part of the issue that our government has with just cutting our taxes to stimulate the economy is that they don’t believe that we will spend our money as wisely as they can.  It seems that us common everyday folks don’t understand the need for turtle tunnels and marijuana research and given the choice wouldn’t spend our own money on such important things.

This is just another example of our out of touch government doing everything possible to hold on to the power they have grabbed over the last several decades.

We were even told that if we didn’t pass the stimulus “now”, unemployment could reach as high as 9%.  So in the middle of the night, the so called stimulus bill was released.  Many of our elected representative voted for the bill without even reading it.  Either that or they were for the AIG bonuses that so outraged them a few months later that they all voted to protect.

A great post over at hotair details how we have gotten exactly what we wanted to avoid. 

On Friday, the jobs data indicated that unemployment had reached 9.4%.

The post included a chart from Innocent Bystanders that updated the figures put forth by the Obama administration.

With the maroon triangles showing the actual numbers, it appears that not only did they not accurately predict the impact of the stimulus, they neglected to catch that fact that the stimulus would lead to unemployment numbers worse than they predicted without the stimulus.

The bulk of the stimulus money has not been spent yet.  Several critics of the plan pointed that out prior to the passage of the bill.  Perhaps if the bill were posted to the public for 5 days as we were promised, more Americans would have realized the details of the bill.

Instead, the American people were sold on a $800 billion that had to be passed immediately or else.  With the “purpose” of the bill to keep unemployment below 9 %, it apparently is a huge failure.

Perhaps we will all remember this when the next “emergency must pass now” bill is pushed out in the middle of the night.