Recovery Act Sniping...Again

By Robert Brodsky

Just when you thought it was safe to move on past the Recovery Act job reporting numbers story.

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a report which found that between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were saved or created by the stimulus. The report, which buttresses earlier findings by the administration about stimulus job numbers, provoked a new round of sniping between Obama officials and Recovery Act critics, including one news media outlets.

"From independent economists to Congress's own nonpartisan research body, the experts have spoken and the debate is no longer whether the Recovery Act is creating and saving jobs, but how we provide even more opportunities to drive growth and support American workers," said Vice President Joe Biden.

The White House's Recovery Act coordinator Ed DeSeve used the release of the CBO report as an opportunity to respond to a recent request for information by House Minority Leader John Boehner, a frequent critic of the Recovery Act.

"Having heard the Congressional Budget Office cited frequently in your speeches and statements, it seems their report should be a particularly reliable and independent answer to any questions you may have about Recovery Act job impact."

Republicans, however, were not conceding their position.

"The CBO report provides very little comfort to the 15.7 million Americans currently unemployed," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "We know that the economy has lost more than four million jobs since passage of the stimulus. The CBO report does not account for how many of those jobs were lost as a result of $787 billion in deficit spending that takes money out of the private sector. What we have is a stimulus that is paying for government jobs with private sector jobs and has failed to lower unemployment."

However, the most entertaining volley in this seemingly never-ending back-and-forth was served by Jared Bernstein, Biden's chief economist, who in a White House blog post noted the discrepancies between the news and editorial reporting of the Wall Street Journal on the Recovery Act jobs numbers.

"If you read the editorial page, you'll be in the dark," Bernstein writes. "If you read the front page in today's WSJ, you'll learn the facts about the CBO report noted above in the context of an article that documents the importance of stimulus projects to construction workers."

Government Executive will host a at the National Press Club Thursday morning with DeSeve, Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney and J. Christopher Mihm, managing director for strategic Issues at the Government Accountability Office. Expect the debate to continue.