The FTAs' Price Tag, ctd.

By the time most of you read this, the House and Senate will have passed implementing legislation for the Korea, Colombia and Panama FTAs, thus ending a long and tortuous path for these trade agreements.  But before we put the FTA saga to bed for good, I've been looking at a few of the more, ahem, interesting details surrounding these deals.  Last night I went through the CBO scoring of the implementing legislation, and noted that it increased merchandise processing fees on imports from countries other than the three FTA partners to the tune of about $4.3 billion.  I forgot, however, to examine the CBO scoring of the expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance and Generalized System of Preferences legislation accompanying the FTAs.  As you'll recall, this legislation is only being considered now because President Obama refused to formally submit the FTAs to Congress unless he had assurances that expanded TAA would get reauthorized.  The CBO report (conveniently released only late last week) on TAA/GSP is available here, and the key table laying out the new TAA-related spending and revenues (i.e., taxes) is below:

As you can see, the President's demands that TAA expansion be included with the FTAs will cost US taxpayers over $1.1 billion over the next five years.  Meanwhile, an increase in the merchandise processing fees from 0.21% to 0.3464% ad valorem on US imports will offset the cost of TAA expansion by raising over $2.4 billion in new customs fees paid by US importers (and, thus, American consumers).  The TAA bill then lowers those fees to only 0.174% in 2016, allegedly providing some $600 million in "savings" for US import consumers between 2016 and 2019.

And there's where things get a little more interesting.

As I noted last night, the CBO score for the KORUS also raises revenues (again, $4.3 billion) by increasing merchandise processing fees.  The schedule for those new fees is here:

Now, please notice how the KORUS-related fee increase (also from 0.21% to 0.3464%) doesn't begin until 2016 - just as the TAA-related fee increase is supposedly lowered to 0.174% (a little lower than the current 0.21%).  In short, there are conflicting merchandise fees - and thus budgetary effects - in 2016-2019. (And, in case you're wondering, I also checked the text of the legislation, and each bill amends the exact same provision of US law - 19 USC 58c(a)(9)).

So what the heck is going on here?  I'm certainly no budget guru, but I only see two options:

(1) Assuming that the KORUS law supersedes the TAA law, then those $600 million in consumer savings don't actually exist.

(2) Assuming that the TAA law supersedes the KORUS law, then those $4.3 billion in consumer taxes don't actually exist.

I don't know about you, but I'm guessing it's the former scenario, and if so, we can add another $600 million to CBO's scoring of (and thus the price tag of) the expanded TAA bill.

Sweet.

Wednesday Quick Hits

Lots of great stuff out there for your reading pleasure:

• Cato's Dan Griswold helpfully explains why all those allegedly "conservative/libertarian" arguments against FTAs are bunk.  (More on that here.)

• A ton of former USTRs and other US officials, from both parties, urge President Obama to get off his butt and submit all pending FTAs to Congress asap.

• Magic bean economics, Carolina-style: if your stimulus* can't create those mythical green jobs, then just spend $1 million more to reclassify existing jobs.  Problem "solved"!

• Aw, poor little crony capitalists: ethanol's apparently on the outs in Washington; I'll believe it when I see it.

• The Obama administration released its 2011 trade policy agenda yesterday; in response, the world let out a collective yawn and tried not to snicker when USTR Kirk said that his "Administration has blazed a new trail on trade." (I'll be providing an exciting review in the next few days.  Stay tuned!)

• Cato's Dan Ikenson is boycotting ABC and Disney because the once-venerable World News Tonight has made a conscious decision to air a week of jingoistic, fearmongering garbage.  (Of course, you already knew that.)

• The Koch brothers fight back against the Left's slander/libel, and in the process show that ethical, well-run businesses don't need or want protective tariffs.

• If the GAO's new report on redundant government programs, and the insane amounts of waste that they create, doesn't make you a libertarian (or at least a hardcore fiscal conservative), then I don't know what will.  Seriously.

• Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux has declared intellectual war on Ian Fletcher, the self-avowed protectionist, HuffPo blogger and new senior "economist" at something ironically called the "Coalition for a Prosperous America."  As exhibits one, two, three, four, five and six demonstrate, the results of this skirmish are as lopsided as you imagined.

• New Cato Study: the United States effective corporate tax rate is really, REALLY high.

Enjoy.

Monday Quick Hits

Lots of interesting stuff went down while everyone was vacationing.  Here's a quick rundown:

• The Wall Street Journal's editorial board explains how a US antidumping order on magnesium has destroyed American manufacturing jobs in industries that rely on the metal to produce downstream inputs.  The money lines: "In 2005, at the behest of America's monopoly magnesium producer—U.S. Magnesium of Utah—the Commerce Department imposed antidumping duties on magnesium from Russia and magnesium alloy from Russia and China. Five years later magnesium alloy is in short supply in the U.S., leading to much higher prices than in the rest of the world and a crisis for die casters, alloy producers and recyclers.... In a December 6 letter to the ITC, Arkansas Congressman Mike Ross spelled out the problem: 'U.S. manufacturers pay $2.30 per pound on average for magnesium alloy while manufacturers in Mexico, Canada and Europe pay $1.50 per pound and Chinese manufacturers pay $1.36 per pound.' Die casters who have tried shifting to aluminum have lost orders to overseas producers."  Cato's Dan Ikenson piles on by citing the magnesium case as a prime example of US trade policy's cognitive dissonance.

• The Chinese are starting to really hammer home the fact that, as your humble correspondent keeps screaming aboutcalmly mentioning, global supply chains have rendered old school trade stats obsolete tools for measuring actual tradeflows and the efficacy of existing trade policies.  Most of the information cited here is old news for readers of this blog, but here's a new one: "Sheng Guangzu, head of China's General Administration of Customs, told Xinhua in an interview in April that much of China's trade surplus was 'transferred' from foreign-funded enterprises operating in China. In the first 11 months this year, exports of foreign-funded enterprises totaled 779.14 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 54.7 percent of China's total exports, according to China's customs authorities.  The data also showed that, during the same period, foreign-funded firms generated 112.51 billion U.S. dollars of trade surplus, accounting for 66 percent of China's total surplus."

• In case you missed it, GMU's Walter Williams deftly explains that (a) trade is among individuals, not countries, and (b) free trade is by definition "fair trade."

• The WSJ's Liam Denning discusses why "national rivalry always lurks around an industry as dependent on government support as renewable energy."  His first example: the heavily subsidized United Steelworkers's "Section 301" petition against Chinese green subsidies.  Sounds familiar, eh?

• Heritage's Jim Roberts gives us a quick reminder that free trade is a prime contributor to the dramatic increase in all Americans' living standards over the last 50 years.

• Behold, the stunning incompetence of the federal government: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.... [Acting Comptroller General] Dodaro also cited material weaknesses involving an estimated $125.4 billion in improper payments, information security across government, and tax collection activities. He noted that three major agencies — the DOD, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor — did not get clean opinions. Nineteen of 24 major agencies did get clean opinions on all their statements."

• Cato's Dan Griswold destroys the canard that US multi-nationals corporations' overseas hires are responsible for high domestic unemployment.  In short, companies follow economic growth, not lower wages; and the US still benefits when they do. I'd only add that we'd be even better off if the US adopted more pro-growth tax and regulatory policies.  (More on that point in a great IBD editorial here.)

• It's time for the US to stop futzing around and implement the US-Colombia FTA.  Seriously.

• The US manufacturing sector is cranking.  Fearmongering American politicians were shockingly unavailable for comment.

• A free trader's new year's resolution.

• This is absolutely hilarious (mild content warning).  So is this.

Enjoy.

UPDATE5: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

This ABC report pretty much speaks for itself:

More than 50,000 jobs, or one out of every 10 jobs the White House says were "saved or created" by their economic stimulus plan, came from projects that reported spending no money yet, according to a government report obtained by ABC News.

The report by the Government Accountability Office analyzes the administration's October 2009 report on jobs saved or created by the $787 billion stimulus program and finds a "range of significant reporting and processing problems that need to be addressed." ...

The new GAO report finds that 58,386 of the more than 640,000 "saved or created" jobs listed on recovery.gov are from stimulus projects where no money has yet been spent.

On the flip side, the report finds nearly 10,000 projects that report spending a total of $965 million without creating any jobs at all.

The report also raises questions about how closely the contracts are being monitored. Twenty-five percent of the more than 130,000 primary contracts listed were not marked as having been reviewed by any government agency, and less than 1 percent of subcontracts were reviewed.

Here's the ABC video report. Oy vey.

UPDATE4: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

More news rolled in today on the White House's bogus Stimulus* job statistics:

• ABC News:  "Obama Admin Slashed 60,000 Jobs From Recent Stimulus Report." So not only are you saying that the White House was aware of these ridiculous reports, but you're also saying the report could have been a lot worse?!?! Yikes.
  

• Detroit Free Press (courtesy of HotAir): "Billions for state, but where are jobs? Majority of stimulus awards have brought little help." "[The Free Press'] analysis also revealed that others who have been promised or have received stimulus money have overstated -- in some cases greatly -- the number of jobs created or protected."

Finally, the hardworking folks over at the Washington Examiner have done a much better - and more technologically savvy - job than I've done at documenting all of the Stimulus* misreporting.  They've produced an interactive map, available here, which shows that - so far - the White House's report overcounted jobs by at more than 10%.  I say "so far" because not all state newspapers have completed their analyses.

75,343 fake jobs and counting!  Viva la HopeChange!

UPDATE3: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

Like the sands of the hourglass, so are the stories of ridiculous, bogus Stimulus* job statistics.  This week, the Boston Globe - hardly the hyper-critic of the Obama administration - unveils their review of the Massachusetts Stimulus* job numbers that those zany White House "triple-checkers" released a couple weeks ago:

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started....

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report....

“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. “It’s hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this.’’

The federal stimulus report for Massachusetts has so many errors, missing data, or estimates instead of actual job counts that it may be impossible to accurately tally how many people have been employed by the massive infusion of federal money. Massachusetts is expected to receive an estimated $1 billion more in stimulus contracts, grants, and loans....

“We see $15 million construction projects with no jobs, and a $900 shoe sale that created nine jobs. Both are obviously wrong,’’ said Michael Balsam, chief solutions officer for Onvia, a Seattle data company tracking the stimulus spending. “There were a lot of recipients that did not report. Those that did report have some data challenges - wrong data or missing data.’’...

Some of the errors are striking: The community action agency based in Greenfield reported 90 full-time jobs associated with the $245,000 it got for its preschool Head Start program. That averages out to just $2,700 per full-time job. The agency said it used the money to give roughly 150 staffers cost-of-living raises. The figure reported on the federal report was a mistake, a result of a staffer’s misunderstanding of the filing instructions, said executive director Jane Sanders.

Several other Head Start agencies also reported using stimulus funds for pay raises and claimed jobs for it.

At Bridgewater State, Baldwin said the college mistakenly counted part-time student jobs as full time.

Some agencies that received stimulus money reported jobs for work that had not started. The Greater Lawrence Family Health Center reported 30 construction jobs “have been created,’’ even though it hadn’t begun construction on a $1.5 million renovation and expansion. Grant administrator Beth Melnikas said the health center does expect to hire 30 workers....

For example, the City of Waltham said a $630,500 solar panel installation on the roof of City Hall created 10 jobs - even though the work had yet to begin. Revere spent $485,500 in stimulus funds to install solar panels on the roof of a city school. Revere’s job count? 64....

Massachusetts property owners received $75.5 million in rental subsidies from the stimulus bill, for a reported total of 437 jobs. Recipients of 27 of the 87 contracts reported zero jobs. The others, meanwhile, simply reported the number of employees working at the property. If they received two contracts, for a larger property, they reported the employee figure twice.

For example, Plumley Village East in Worcester listed 23 jobs for each of its two contracts for a total of 46 jobs, even though it has only 23 employees working throughout the complex....

One of those property owners, meanwhile, is frustrated by his experience with the legislation. Robert Ercolini manages a 201-unit affordable housing development in Plymouth. After being notified his annual rental subsidies were classified as stimulus spending, Ercolini renewed a request to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for more than $1 million to fix up the property, reasoning he would be creating jobs by hiring contractors. He was refused.

“After HUD denied me money to make needed improvements and actually create jobs,’’ Ercolini said, “it’s really funny to find out in September that I’ve been receiving stimulus funds all along and they want to know how many jobs we’ve saved or created.’’

By his count, the answer is: “No jobs.’’

No.  Jobs.  None.  You know, these stories would be kinda funny, if they hadn't, you know, been appearing all over the country at a taxpayer cost of $795 billion (sans interest).  Hence, not funny. At all.

But wait, there's more.  The good folks over at HotAir have found another news story (they list several, but I've already cited the others) that documents similar instances of "wild exaggeration":

In Connecticut, the accounting for jobs saved and created apparently neglected to check the work, claiming that Porkulus funds saved 108 jobs in a police department of 22 officers — who weren’t at risk of being laid off anyway. In Texas (same link), a contractor hired five roofers and an inspector to replace some fencing and roofs in a town of 900 people, and got credited with saving 450 jobs.

This is quickly becoming a nationwide scam, isn't it?  A despicable, nationwide scam.

Anyway, for those of you playing the Stimulus* home game (costs $795; broken on arrival) and keeping score on the number of states that have - so far - reported bogus job stats, here's your new tally: Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Massachusetts, Oregon, Florida, Texas and California.

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a Stimulus* job walk into a bar....

Health Care Quote of the Day

Ok, this is kinda long to be called a "quote," but I think it sums up quite well the absurdity of the cost projections for the ObamaCare monstrosity that passed the House late last night:

Maybe the bill passed by the House on Saturday night will stay within its cost projections. Of course, you have several cost projections to choose from. The Democrats’ cost claims are all ridiculous lies, designed using accounting techniques that would land private businessmen in jail, just in time to save them from being drawn and quartered by stockholders. The Heritage Foundation’s estimate of $2.4 to $2.6 trillion over 10 years, beginning when the House bill transitions from front-loaded tax hikes to full Daffy Duck freak-out spending in 2014, is the most logical projection of its true costs I’ve seen.

Even this will likely prove to be an underestimation of the true long-term costs. No other Big Government program has ever stayed within an order of magnitude of the promises made when it was signed into law. Medicare originally cost about $3 billion, when it began in 1965, and was projected to cost about $12 billion by 1990, adjusted for inflation. The actual cost in 1990 was nearly ten times that figure, $107 billion. It was up to $440 billion by 2007. The architects of the program would have been run out of town on a rail, if these future costs had been known to the voters of 1965.

The difference between promised benefits and expected revenues for Social Security and Medicare amounts to about $107 trillion dollars, which Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute points out is double the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire world. The most strident opponent of the New Deal would never have dreamed of predicting this level of cost overrun. Name any government program that has been around for more than five years, and the odds are good it costs at least triple what its opponents originally said it would cost.

In other words, whatever budget number the President, the CBO, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or even John Boehner give you for ObamaCare, it's wrong.  Exponentially wrong.  So when the folks in DC start arguing over a few billions of deficit here or there, just stop listening because it's going to be a lot worse than even the worst of the projections.  It always is.  Always.

Read the whole thing here.

Update2: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

Another day, another story of bogus Stimulus* job numbers.  Today's episode comes from California, courtesy of the Sacramento Bee:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

"This is not really a real number of people," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "It's like a budget number."...

Asked how many jobs actually would have been lost at CSU campuses without the stimulus infusion, Potes-Fellow said she did not know, though she said it would have been significant.

Translation: "We have no freakin' idea, but trust us, it's plenty!"

Adding this news to the earlier stories that I've previously noted, we now have bogus White House Stimulus* job stats from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon, Florida and California.  I have no doubt that more of these ridiculous, anger-inducing stories are on the way, and at some point we'll probably need to ditch the whole report and stop "just trusting them."

Actually, with unemployment at 10.2%, I'd say that now is that point.

Update: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

The Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy has more evidence of ridiculous Stimulus* job-counting over at NRO's The Corner.  She finds stories from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Boston.com (a repeat of the AP article I cited yesterday), and - gasp! - the New York Times that all indicate massive over-reporting in the White House's latest jobs report.

Her conclusions on the NYT Article:

The Times says reports released last week "from more than 130,000 recipients of stimulus money in which they claimed to have saved or created more than 640,000 jobs" are in some cases "simply wrong, while others contain apparently subjective estimates."

Basically, the newspaper admits that maybe the administration can't really calculate the number of jobs saved or created with the stimulus money.

DOH!  Read the whole thing, and the linked articles, here.  That now makes five news stories - reporting from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon and Florida - highlighting the rampant problems with the "triple-checked" report.

640,239 jobs "saved or created," huh?  Umm, yeah, not so much.

Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

[UPDATES here and here]

When the White House announced last week (with a straight face) that the Stimulus* had "saved or created" exactly 640,239 jobs, most "mainstream" media outlets got out their official Hopenchange flatware and ate that raw data up.  And they did it despite the fact that the AP issued a report just a day earlier eviscerating the accuracy of the original Stimulus* jobs report.  But who can really blame the MSM?  I mean, this time, the White House said they had - wait for it - "triple checked" the numbers, so they had to be dead-on, right?

Wrong.

Since the release of the administration's latest jobs report, the reports of inaccuracy have come flying in from all over the nation.  And they are absolutely ridiculous.

First, we have the AP informing us today that stimulus*-caused salary raises were counted as "saved jobs":

President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved....

The administration now acknowledges overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data "to determine how and if it will be counted."

But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.

"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

The latest stimulus report, released Friday, significantly overstates the number of jobs spared with money from programs serving families and children, mostly the Head Start preschool program. The report shows hundreds of the programs used nearly $323 million to provide pay raises and other benefits to their existing employees....

Many Head Start programs around the country went further, counting everyone who received a raise as a job saved....

The Bergen County Community Action Program in Hackensack, N.J., noted the nearly $213,000 it received went to cover raises for existing staff only, but it also reported saving 85 jobs.

At Southwest Georgia Community Action Council in Moultrie, Ga., director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved.

"I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given."...

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, to pay for training and continuing education, to extend employee work hours or to buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

I'll let it slide that government employees are getting raises while most of the private sector has experienced pay cuts, pay freezes or outright layoffs.  Instead, I ask you to take a moment to wrap your head around the last example provided: 508 employees got a Stimulus*-inspired raise of 1.84%.  Even assuming that this "pay raise = saved job" logic is correct (and it's obviously not) the "right" number of "saved jobs" would be 9.35 (508*.0184), not 935.  That's an overstatement of 100 times!  Hummina hummina.

Second, we have the Chicago Tribune reporting that the Illinois stimulus* cash saved more school district jobs than actually exist:

More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.

Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187.

The Obama administration last week released the first round of data designed to underpin the worthiness of its economic stimulus plan, which so far has directed $1.25 billion to Illinois schools. That money has helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in the state, the administration claimed.

But those statistics, compiled initially by the Illinois State Board of Education, appear riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity, according to a Tribune analysis of district-by-district stimulus spending and other state data. Many local school officials were perplexed by the stimulus data attributed to their districts.

In the official report, Wilmette Public Schools District 39 was credited with 166 jobs saved by stimulus aid. Superintendent Raymond Lechner said the number should be zero.

At Dolton-Riverdale School District 148, stimulus funds were said to have saved the equivalent of 382 full-time teaching jobs -- 142 more than the district actually has.

A similar discrepancy was found in data for Kankakee School District 111, where the stimulus report logged the equivalent of 665 full-time jobs saved. "That's impossible," a top Kankakee school official said, adding that the entire payroll -- full and part time -- is 600 workers....

Statewide, districts reported using most of their stimulus funds to prevent layoffs, with the equivalent of just 222 full-time jobs added to payrolls....

It appears the state treasury -- not students or school districts -- was the prime beneficiary of the education stimulus jackpot in Illinois. In great measure, funds simply were used to replace general aid payments already owed to local districts by the state. That gave Gov. Pat Quinn breathing room in his struggle to rein in a whopping two-year budget deficit of more than $10 billion....

[O]fficials of several districts contacted by the Tribune insisted they never provided the state with the jobs numbers used in the official tabulation....

Some local school officials suggested that the jobs data sent to the state appeared to have been overcounted in the official tabulation....

Just a handful of the jobs were new, Rafferty said, and he warned that every position propped up by stimulus money would be in jeopardy when the program expires. "Unless there's a guarantee of continuation of (federal or state) money, the vast majority of these will be eliminated because there won't be local resources to fund them," he said.

Of course, this collapse of basic mathematics is even more troubling since our nation's teachers are the ones making the mistakes.  That travesty aside, I think the last paragraph is probably the most distressing part of the story: the few jobs that the Stimulus* actually did create aren't even self-sustaining.  They disappear unless more taxpayer cheese magically appears.  That kind of "job creation" is not a recipe for long-term economic growth.

Third, the Wall Street Journal has dug into the latest report and found that the data are overstated by, at a minimum, tens of thousands of jobs:

Recipients of the government grants and contracts appear to have made mistakes when estimating the number of jobs that have been saved or created, according to the Journal's review. Some recipients said they were confused by forms that asked how they spent the money....

Ed DeSeve, the senior adviser to President Barack Obama on implementation of the stimulus plan, said Tuesday in a statement responding to questions from the Journal that the administration knew the reports were not "100 percent accurate" but that the plan was supposed "to create jobs, not count them." He said that even the "approximate" total pointed to "tremendous progress."

"We are looking at both overcount reports and undercount reports, and continue to ask questions of recipients to try to fix errors," Mr. DeSeve said. "In the end, we think any adjustments to the direct jobs count will be modest as a percentage of the 640,000 jobs total, either raising it or lowering it slightly."...

Some colleges and universities counted every part-time student work-study position as a full-time job, according to their reports, which are published online at recovery.gov.

And some low-income housing landlords whose decades-old contracts with the federal government were funded by the stimulus this year reported a total of 6,463 employees as having jobs linked to the stimulus package.

Most recipients of stimulus money are required to file quarterly reports on how they used it. The government published more than 150,000 such reports late last week. A preliminary review revealed dozens of recipients claiming to have created or saved at least one job with less than $2,000 in stimulus money, to a total of at least 3,300 jobs.

A Kentucky shoe-store owner claimed to have created or saved nine jobs with an $889.60 contract to supply work boots to the Army Corps of Engineers. The owner said he supplied nine pairs of boots and that the mistake arose from confusion over the government form.

In addition, as many as 86% of the jobs estimated by recipients of Head Start grants could have been inaccurately reported, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The department said 277 of the 1,601 reports it had received were being reviewed after being contacted by the Journal. Those reports claimed 7,753 jobs created or saved out of a total of 8,997 reported.

"Holy moly, that's not right," Teresa Cox, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency in Salem, Ore., said of her organization's report. It indicated that 205 jobs were created or saved with the agency's $397,761 federal grant. The money, she said, was used for pay raises.

Ms. Cox said her agency thought it was supposed to report the number of employees affected by the stimulus money. "And the only way to do that was to create new jobs or retain jobs."

An HHS spokesman, Luis Rosero, said the department had told recipients to report only fractions of a job if the money was being used for bonuses or raises.

Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., counted every part-time work-study position funded by the stimulus, and, in some cases, more than one work-study position held by the same student. That led to the university reporting that it had created or saved 483 jobs with a $193,469 grant for its work-study program.

University spokeswoman Cindi Brownfield said the campus has since realized that the actual jobs number should have been written as the full-time equivalent of the jobs -- probably between 18 and 30.

Holy moly is right, Ms. Cox.  Holy frickin' moly.

And you just gotta love Mr. DeSeve's classic bureaucrat blowoff of "Whatever, dude, it's only billions of unaccounted-for taxpayer dollars.  Not my problem."  Totally, man.

But hey, look, maybe we also shouldn't blame the people who reported the worthless data.  According USA Today (check out Maxine Waters' awesome "look of utter exasperation"), some government subagencies that have accepted hundreds of millions in Stimulus* funds are totally and utterly incapable of accounting for the funds and disbursing them properly.  So cut them some slack: it's not their fault that they don't understand percentages!  Fractions are hard!

And yet, these are the same people - the same architects, advisers, bureacrats and government employees - who are demanding that we trust them with reorganizing and controlling the entire American healthcare system (one-sixth of the whole US economy).

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't even trust them with 1.84 percent of it.