Washington Times Editorial: Cooking the books on job claims

Cooking the books on job claims

Administration officials passed around the champagne Tuesday as the Congressional Budget Office reported that the $814 billion spent on the first stimulus bill created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million new jobs. President Obama's policies "put the country on a path to recovery by getting Americans back to work quickly," Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. crowed. "We've created 3 million jobs, and we're adding jobs every month."

As is obvious to anyone living outside the Beltway, there's not much cause for celebration in this economy. While America's output is on the rise, the rate of growth is weak, and many economists expect that the second-quarter GDP growth figure will be revised down to just 1 percent on an annual basis.

The job outlook is equally bleak. Each week, a half-million people sign up for unemployment. For some, it is the first time ever setting foot in a line to ask for benefits. For 1.7 million others, the wait has been so hopeless that they've simply given up looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey finds that since April, the total number of people employed has dropped by 495,000.

If that's the case, how did CBO arrive at 3 million jobs created? . . .