Stimulus and Jobs-Another phony stat.

The White House sent a memo to federal agencies last month, announcing that it would no longer count a job as "saved or created" by the stimulus, but rather count the number of jobs "funded" by the stimulus.
That means any "stimulus" money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who were never in jeopardy of losing their positions.

However, on Tuesday the White House Council of Economic Advisors claimed the stimulus created or saved 1.5 million to 2 million jobs last year.

Rea Hederman, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, says the Obama administration is changing the rules of how it originally decided to count jobs as "saved" in an effort to make the stimulus "look better" and "save themself from future embarrassment." He notes many people were skeptical of the President's earlier claim that the stimulus had saved 650,000-plus jobs.

"A number of newspapers went through and said, 'Wow, how can you say this when Arizona doesn't have a fifteenth congressional district?' A lot of newspaper articles were focused on how ludicrous these numbers were when somebody who's bought ten pairs of shoes said that he created 20 jobs," Hederman reports. "A lot of confusion in the numbers that the administration originally put forth came under a great deal of attack, and so the administration said, 'Wow, that way is too complicated. Let's just say now that any job that kind of handles or receives any type of stimulus money is counted as saved.'"

The policy analyst says, for example, a secretary handling a stimulus-related project is now being counted as a job saved even if her job was never in danger to begin with.