Sour 'stimulus' plan reduces employment (OneNewsNow.com)

Sour 'stimulus' plan reduces employment (OneNewsNow.com)

A former official with the White House Office of Management and Budget says the net number of jobs created by President Obama's "stimulus" program is zero or worse.

The White House is boasting that 650,000 jobs have already been saved or created under President Obama's economic stimulus plan, and that the program is on track to reach the president's promise of 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein says when adding in jobs linked to $288 billion in tax cuts, the stimulus plan has created or saved more than one-million jobs.

However, J.D. Foster, an economist at The Heritage Foundation, says the White House is making brazen claims about job creation during a time of rising unemployment. He believes their figures are "fraudulent and misleading."

"In saying that, I'm not criticizing the calculation of the number that they've put out, but rather the interpretation. What they have referred to in effect is a 'gross jobs created' number, and they ignore the jobs that their program has destroyed," says Foster. "And so you end up with a positive. But when you look at the jobs that are destroyed by this program, they're to a first-approximation equivalent to the jobs they say they've saved or created, and you end up with at best a net zero -- and in all likelihood a significant reduction in employment because of this program."

The economist notes that in putting its best face forward, the Obama administration is predicting that the unemployment rate will go through ten percent and stay there until at least the fall, but the reality is probably much worse because the programs President Obama is pursuing to help the economy are "utterly ineffective" and are only adding to the national debt.