A congressional watchdog said the government faces “significant reporting and quality issues” with its tally of jobs created by a $787 billion stimulus package.
In a written draft of testimony to be delivered Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, acting U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said reporting errors by recipients of the funds created inconsistencies in calculating the jobs created or saved by the stimulus spending.
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President Barack Obama’s administration reported last month that the stimulus, which Congress approved in February, has created or saved 640,329 jobs. Vice President Joe Biden has said that the figure showed “the recovery act is operating as advertised.”
Dodaro, who in his job supervises the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, says in his draft testimony the agency found that 58,386 of the jobs cited by the administration were reported by entities that said they hadn’t received or spent any stimulus funding. The GAO also found more than 9,000 reports of entities receiving or spending stimulus money without creating or saving any jobs.
“There is a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed,” said Dodaro in the draft of his remarks.
The analysis is likely to become political fodder on Capitol Hill where Democrats are considering additional legislation to combat joblessness while responding to complaints by Republicans that the February stimulus package was poorly designed.
Stimulus money “needs to be spent on projects that actually create jobs,” Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat, said in a written statement. “The money needs to get out into the economy faster and targeted to economically distressed areas and it must be accounted for properly.”
Congressional Republicans have seized upon media investigations that found errors in the reporting of jobs created by the stimulus legislation.
“This administration continues to misread the economy, misunderstand the nature of economic growth, mislead the American people with faulty job claims, and miss the steps this country needs to take to get our economy back on track,” said Representative Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the oversight panel.
In a response to the GAO report, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget controller Danny Werfel wrote in a letter that most of the jobs data is correct and that errors are being fixed when they are identified.
“There are numerous instances where the data provided by the recipients is reliable and accurate,” according to a copy of the letter provided by an administration official. “Where there is erroneous data, we do not find it acceptable and will continue to work” to identify errors.
Obama, in an interview with Fox News in Beijing, called the reporting errors a “side issue.”
“The question is now, are we accelerating job growth? That’s my no. 1 job,” Obama said.
Stimulus-related jobs were generated through 130,362 contracts, grants and loans totaling $159 billion, the administration reported on its Recovery.gov Web site.
In addition to Dodaro, the House oversight committee plans to hear testimony from Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, Deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari and Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller.
Porcari and Miller will testify tomorrow that the administration is asking grant recipients for help in identifying ways to improve the process for reporting jobs, according to testimony provided by the administration official.
The GAO is required to provide periodic audits of the reports that those receiving grants, contracts and loans from the stimulus package must file with the government. The reports detail how the money was spent and include estimates of the numbers of jobs created or saved.
