2 million jobs saved or created….SOUND FAMILIAR?

Vice President Joe Biden in an interview Wednesday stated that taxpayers have "gotten their money's worth" out of the $787 billion stimulus program that Congress passed during the depths of the recession.

"Jobs have been created thanks to tens of thousands of projects now underway nationwide," Vice President Joe Biden wrote to Obama in a 31-page progress report about the stimulus. Biden said the act is laying groundwork for "the economy of the next century," as the U.S. invests in high-speed rail, health technology, clean cars and other things.

He argued that money invested in both private and public-sector initiatives has saved as many as 2 million jobs, and said, "I don't think they realize it." Biden said the program, now a year old, was designed to be implemented in two stages, saying "we've only been halfway through the act."

Biden also said the administration understands why people are angry about chronically high unemployment, which now stands at 9.7 percent of the labor force. "We get it," he said.

Mr. Biden….do you think we all had a lobotomy?

AP Article 1/12/2010
The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.

Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It's no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it's a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus.When does "Change you can believe in" kick in?

That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.

The new rules, quietly published last month in a memorandum to federal agencies, mark the White House's latest response to criticism about the way it counts jobs credited to the stimulus. When The Associated Press first reported flaws in the job counts in October, the White House said errors were being corrected and future counts would provide a full and correct accounting of just how many stimulus jobs were saved or created.