On October 29, the White House claimed that the Cash for Clunkers program contributed to a surge in economic growth: "We found out that motor vehicle output added 1.7% to economic growth in the third quarter - the largest contribution to quarterly growth in over a decade." But Jim Geraghty notes that "The revised numbers out today indicate that automotive consumption was less than half of what was initially estimated, contributing 0.81 of a percentage point to growth. The overall quarterly growth number was revised from 3.5 percent to 2.8 percent." Meanwhile local papers around the country continue to expose the false reports of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus program. Michael Brendan Dougherty writes in New York's Putnam County Courier:
The Federal government claims that when Putnam County purchased five Paratransit vans with $319,000 of federal stimulus funds, 60 jobs were saved. A casual visitor to Recovery. gov might think that those 60 jobs were in Putnam County. But John Lynch, Putnam County's Commissioner of Planning/Development and Public Transportation, said, "That number of 60 jobs is incorrect." In fact, the number of jobs that should appear on the report is not 60, but just 1.54, and those one and a half jobs are actually in New Paris, Indiana. Whether by bureaucratic error, or deliberate maneuvering, the administration has inflated claims of job creation based on Putnam County stimulus spending. Other stimulus-funded projects in Putnam County are riddled with reporting errors and inaccuracies. Recovery.gov reports that Putnam County has received $1,092,595 of stimulus money for projects, $319,000 of which was dedicated to purchasing five new Paratransit vans, manufactured by Turtletop Busses in Indiana. Lynch told the Courier that the inaccurate number of 60 jobs created by the purchase of vans "counted both the second and third fiscal quarters, when it was only supposed to count the third quarter." Putnam County officials tried to correct the number before the third quarter report was issued, but were "frozen out of the system" according to Lynch. The number 60 does not reflect the number of jobs saved only by Putnam county's expenditure of $319,000; that expenditure would yield an average salary of $5,316 per year.
The administration's explanation for these errors does not inspire confidence:
"We know what the problem is and we are trying to fix it,'' said [Ed] Pound [director of communications for recovery.gov]. Asked why recipients would pluck random numbers - 26, 45, 14 - to fill in for their congressional district, Pound replied, "who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.''