Barack Obama and Joe Biden have spent a lot of time recently taking credit for saving jobs — a rather curious position, considering the bleed-out of jobs currently taking place.  How, exactly, does the administration calculate those job savings?  Jake Tapper at ABC took a peek under the hood of Recovery, Inc and found a completely unsurprising result:

Project #55 in the report states that: “With the help of Recovery Act funding, Zeglin’s Home TV & Appliance, a locally-owned and operated company, is currently replacing stoves in Public Housing units in Davenport, Iowa, with American-made Whirlpool appliances.”

The reality:  Zeglins TV & Appliance, Inc. in Davenport, recently placed an order for 160 stoves and refrigerators for public housing. …

But… this was a project that had already been approved by Davenport city council to be paid for by federal monies, Margaret Murphy the Assisted Housing Manager for the city, tells ABC News.

When the stimulus bill passed, some astute city workers realized they could have some of that order paid for by the stimulus because of the American steel used in the stoves.

In other words, Porkulus just reshuffled this money rather than providing new funds for this project.  It didn’t employ anyone who wasn’t going to get employed without Porkulus.  Obama and Biden lied about saving these jobs.

That, of course, prompts a bigger question: if Obama and Biden have to do this in order to claim any saved jobs at all, has Porkulus done anything yet to save or create a single job?  If so, why fib about Zeglins TV & Appliance?  And while we’re glad that Tapper bothered to check the numbers, why is the rest of the national media simply swallowing the White House claims without any sense of skepticism or at least journalistic curiosity?  Oh, okay, the last question was rhetorical.