Oh this is rich! The Government Accountability Office has released their estimates on the cost of each job "created" by the stimulus. It cost us $194,213 per job.
Apparently they were not happy with the numbers so they came up with a new term. They are no longer going to use the term "Jobs Created" instead, the new term is one of President Obama's favorites. We've heard it used in speeches when he is trying to sell a box of turds.
You will now see them refer to "Lives Touched" instead of talking about jobs.
According to the DOE “Lives Touched” is a figure used to track the amount of people who have been positively affected by the Recovery Act funds. This total would include people who have been provided full time employment (i.e. saved and created jobs) through the Recovery Act and people who at some point have supported a project funded by the Recovery Act.Brilliant!
Hey the Recovery Act "Touched" my life. I owe the government an extra $40,000 because of it. So count me in!
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/19/obamanomics-touching-lives-195000-at-a-time/print/I think you need to read the source article.
It's just one part of the stimulus, done by the Department of Energy and here is what it was for
"The funds were supposed to create jobs and promote economic recovery by expanding and accelerating the environmental cleanup of hazardous and radiological waste at the nation’s nuclear weapons complex."
http://www.ktvz.com/oregon-northwest/24454594/detail.htmlThis is a good example of how wingnuts work these days. Start with a GAO report on one small program, then take a news report about what a partisan Republican thinks the report says and have far rightwing bloggers take that small nugget of partisan filtered truth and exaggerate it many times over into meaning something else.
Like a report by the GAO whose title is :Most DOE Cleanup Projects Appear to Be Meeting Cost and Schedule Targets, but Assessing Impact of Spending Remains a Challenge"
And turn it into "each job ‘created’ by the stimulus bill costs an average of $194,213" which is nowhere in this report at all. In fact, the report says that the while the DOE is claiming this project will SAVE $8 billion by speeding cleanup the GAO disputes that and says it may be overstated by as much as 80%, meaning this project will only save $2 billion.
Here is what the GAO report actually says:
DOE expected that Recovery Act funding would help it achieve several goals, including accelerating the cleanup effort and reducing the footprint of facilities and contamination at 17 of its sites, creating jobs, and reducing total remaining cleanup costs. As the halfway mark in DOE’s Recovery Act work approaches, the department has made progress toward completing cleanup projects and the majority, although not all, of these projects appear to be meeting cost and schedule targets. In carrying out its Recovery Act work, DOE has implemented additional steps to address familiar contract and project management challenges, by providing stricter controls over how and when funds are disbursed to cleanup sites, increasing reporting requirements, and paying greater attention to project oversight. Although we do not yet know what effects each of these additional steps to improve project management and increase oversight of Recovery Act projects will ultimately have on DOE’s ability to meet projects’ cost and schedule targets, some of the steps could be found useful for Recovery Act cleanup work, as well as carry the potential to be beneficial for projects funded under annual appropriations. The department has been less successful in implementing steps to better assess the results of its Recovery Act work.
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/News/072910_GAO_Report_DOE_Jobs.pdfThe summary starts on page 30
