Vice President Joe Biden at noon will be announcing a new report showing the $787 billion economic stimulus plan so far has "created or saved" at least 1 million jobs.
He will be joined by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).
Administration officials tell TPMDC the new report will credit the Recovery Act with directly creating or saving about 650,000 jobs from its February start through Sept. 30.
The new report, to be posted in full here today, will detail about half the spending so far. The figures "confirm government and private forecaster's estimates that overall Recovery Act spending has created and saved at least 1 million jobs," officials said.
Obama aides tout this as history making since it will offer for the first time ever "more information about the Recovery Act at work than with any previous government program."
These reports are focused on education funding, highway repairs and construction projects reported by officials in state governments.
They say the data will show for each project who received the funds, when they received them, how they began to spend them and the jobs they have supported so far. It will be searchable by state, ZIP cod or Congressional district.
The administration says "analysis by both the Council of Economic Advisers and a wide range of private and public-sector forecasters indicates the Recovery Act contributed between 3 and 4 percentage points to real GDP growth in the third quarter, suggesting that in the absence of the Recovery Act, real GDP would have risen little, if at all, this past quarter."

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tiowally
October 30, 2009 9:30 AM
"Gof." Schwarzenegger? Obviously a typo. Should read "Goof."
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bvd
October 30, 2009 9:41 AM in reply to tiowally
That's the Austrian abbreviation for "Governator."
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tiowally
October 30, 2009 4:07 PM in reply to bvd
Dang she fixed it.
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Moe
October 30, 2009 9:41 AM
I have to admit that I really don't like the "saved or created" phrase. It just leaves too much room to fudge the numbers.
Not that job creation numbers can't be played with too, but at least it is harder to do it.
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Lalo35adm
October 30, 2009 11:04 AM
They already claimed to have "saved or created" 1 million jobs back in September.
Liars.
I prefer the Liebermann headline, who wants to focus on jobs.
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kenga
October 30, 2009 12:55 PM in reply to Lalo35adm
The count is problematic in several ways. I do hope that the metrics and reporting get the kinks and inaccuracies ironed out, as working with accurate information is really a good idea when you're trying to assess policy impacts. Much like oxygen and breathing - a good idea to have it when you're trying to do so.
I'm not sure how happy you'd be, though, if we tried to achieve significant(statistically, I mean) accuracy.
We would have to pay thousands of people to independently vet submitted information for redundancy and applicability, at the federal, state, and municipal levels. I think the bulk of the work would be at the state level - they had some preliminary cuts in the wings, many of which were prevented by stimulus funds, but it will take time, personnel, and money to establish concrete numbers.
Which would create thousands of jobs.
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Brandon
October 30, 2009 11:30 AM
If it's costing $787 000/job, couldn't they all have just been put on the AIG payroll?
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hologram5
October 30, 2009 11:44 AM
From what I remember reading, those numbers have been padded. This is clearly propaganda and I wouldn't trust it.
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storm
October 30, 2009 12:14 PM in reply to hologram5
there is also the possibility that we really would have fallen off a cliff, with upwards of 50% unemployment.
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