Posted on 11/18/2009 3:12:19 PM PST by Liz
Officials tell ABC News so far, they found 700 mistaken Congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants. On Monday night, ABC reported on errors found on the website set up by the White House to track the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program. The website was riddled with reports of jobs in places that didn't even exist. That report prompted anger on Capitol Hill, and defensiveness at the White House. On Tuesday night's broadcast, ABC's Chief Congressional Correspondent Jon Karl took another look at the stimulus confusion (link)
LINK White House Vows to Correct Stimulus Reports; Officials Tell ABC News So Far, They Found 700 Mistaken Congressional Districts Out of More Than 130,000 Stimulus Grants, By ABC NEWS' JONATHAN KARL Nov. 17, 2009
When it comes to stimulus spending, could the wheels of government bureaucracy be grinding too quickly for once? Responding to more inaccuracies discovered in the reporting of spending and job creation from the administration's economic stimulus plan, the top White House official charged with overseeing the program vowed today to go through the reports with a fine-toothed comb and to correct the mistakes. The promise came after ABC News found that Recovery.gov, the government Web site created to track the expenditures, had many job creation and stimulus spending figures that were attributed to congressional districts that do not exist, or that were incorrectly identified. "The first time out, we knew there were going to be problems," said Edward DeSeve, special advisor to the president on the stimulus bill. "We don't think there are a lot of them. There are less than 1 percent in terms of the recent concern about congressional districts of the overall reports. And we've got a good commitment from the recovery board to work with us to fix them."
Officials tell ABC News, so far, they have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants. The White House's Web site claims that more than 640,000 jobs have already been saved and created by the " $787 billion stimulus program. The reports used to come up with that number are riddled with errors. In addition to the jobs in non-existent congressional districts reported Monday by ABC News, in real congressional districts, there are also problems, lots of them. Moore's Shoes in Campbellsville, Ky., claims nine jobs were created from an $890 grant for nine pairs of work boots for the Army Corps of Engineers. Head Start of Augusta, Ga., claimed 317 jobs with a $790,000 grant, but it was really just a one-time raise to its 317 employees. Chris Whitley is a fiscal officer for Central Savannah River Area Economic Opportunity Authority, which administers the Head Start program in Augusta. He says it was the administration's stimulus help line that advised them to claim 317 jobs. "It wasn't illegal, immoral or unethical. And they told me to do it, so I did it," said Whitley. The mistakes have prompted anger on Capitol Hill. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was outraged that one sewer project in his district was listed as creating 100 jobs. The real number is five.
When asked what he thought when he saw the mistakes in his district, Obey said, "I wanted to strangle somebody." Obey is demanding the administration fix the mistakes. "Fix the problem, the blessed problem, so that we're getting accurate information. I don't care what people's bureaucratic niceties are, or how hard it is to do it. I mean, they've got to fix the problem, so the American people can understand what the realities are. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/white-house-stimulus-website-riddled-errors/story?id=9110298
Debate over origin of clerical errors is center of Recovery.org's discrepancies.
Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
WATCH: Web of Errors: Recovery.org's Bad Math
WATCH: Stimulus Recipients Advised to Round Up?
Exclusive: Stimulus Job Count: Fuzzy Math?
Exclusive: Obama Administration Strips 60K Phantom Jobs From Stimulus Report
Recovery.gov: Where Are Stimulus Dollars Going?
Now that is fact checking I can believe in!
Ah .... caused it’s staffed with liars!
Because the White Hut is full of liars.
Because they got basement freaks from DU and Kos doing the math and updates to the web?
Well, don’t the Riddler and the Joker go hand in hand?
Just think what wonders they’ll do with health care ...
Porkulus was nothing but a huge slush fund to begin with.
And by an amazing coincidence, every “mistake” resulted in MORE jobs being claimed, not less!
You forgot incompetent liars.
If the government can’t even properly run their own website, I can’t wait to see how they run healthcare.
C'mon, give Slim Shady and the White Crib a break! He's under a lot of pressure. His job is, like, hard!
Clinton has aides who lied to their diaries...Obama has aides who lie to their website.
700 mistaken Congressional districts
____________________________________________
Silly...
Those 700 districts are all in the 7 extra states of Barry’s America...
No worries...
:)
Probably the phantom districts were in the extra phantom 7 states Obama has ‘visited’.
was Acorn in charge?
Oh I guess it just forgot a zero.
700 new Democrats in the House I guess, all from those 9 phantom states
You weren't supposed to notice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.