Republicans tell Biden: Stop using jobs numbers

Keeping up their attack on the Obama administration's stimulus plan, top House Republicans today urged the man in charge to stop claiming jobs that haven't been confirmed.

House GOP leader John Boehner and Representative Darrell Issa, the senior Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden telling him to stop using jobs "saved or created" figures. The administration claimed nearly 650,000 saved or claimed by last month, and said that figure put the stimulus on track to reach Obama's goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year. Read the letter here.

"Washington Democrats claimed the $787-billion ‘stimulus’ would keep unemployment below eight percent and create jobs ‘immediately.’ Instead, three million more Americans have lost their jobs, and unemployment is over ten percent. The American people are asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ but rather than work with Republicans on common-sense solutions to get our economy moving again, the White House is pressing ahead with a job-killing agenda, including a ‘cap-and-trade’ national energy tax and a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care." Boehner said in a statement.

"Worse, they are attempting to disguise the fact that the ‘stimulus’ isn’t working by releasing a stream of questionable - or outright inaccurate - statistics, including the number of jobs ‘saved or created’ – a metric the Obama Administration seems to have made up out of thin air. It’s time to bring facts back to this debate, and a good first step would be for Vice President Biden to stop citing these fictitious figures."

UPDATE: For their part, Democrats are pointing out that more than a few House Republicans -- 67 and counting, they say -- have tried to reap the political benefits of stimulus projects, though they all voted against the package.

"Given that House Republicans helped create the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and not a single one voted for the Recovery Package, it's hardly surprising that they root for failure while working to distract from the mess they created. We will continue going District by District to set the record straight and expose House Republicans and their Right Wing allies' shameless hypocrisy," Ryan Rudominer, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman, said in a statement.

The administration's jobs count from the $787 billion stimulus has been widely questioned, with some numbers inflated and others impossible to verify and recipients of grants complaining that the forms are difficult to fill out.

Independent congressional watchdogs testified last week that while the stimulus has helped, they could not confirm any count. Many economists also agree that the stimulus has helped slow job losses, though it is exceedingly difficult to quantify.