At issue, is this week's Garrett Gazette, with it's title "Has Stimulus Failed New Jersey?" Here's the offending statement:
As President Obama prepares for his State of the Union address, unemployment remains at record highs for Americans. The White House claims their stimulus bill “has already created or saved up to 2 million jobs,” but the table below compares the White House's recent claims of state-by-state job creation with the actual change in state payroll employment through December 2009, using data announced on Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. According to the data, 49 States have lost jobs since stimulus was enacted in February 2009. Only North Dakota and the District of Columbia have seen net job creation, and even those levels fall short of White House claims.Garrett's playing semantics games again. The White House has never claimed that the stimulus eliminated job losses, only slowed them down. Here's what the White House actually reported:
Citing its own analysis plus a range of private sector summaries, the council estimated the annual growth rate last year would have been roughly 2 percentage points lower, and there would have been 1.5 million to 2 million fewer jobs.So while Garrett would like you to believe the promise was job growth, all that was promised and delivered was that things would be better than without the stimulus. And that's what happened. Less unemployment and greater GDP.
Whether or not you agree with the stimulus, the least we should expect of Garrett and the Republicans is that they discuss the results honestly.
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Just a quick note to readers: As I've started getting e-mails from a few of you asking what's going on, I'm healthy, just super busy. I have a number of side projects going on that have gotten in the way.
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