New WH spin: We "created or saved" a million jobs

A senior administration official e-mails the details:

“Earlier this month, tens of thousands of state and local governments, private companies, colleges and universities and community organizations across the country submitted reports on how they have put Recovery Act funds to work through September 30th. Later today, when these totals are posted, we anticipate that these reports will credit the Recovery Act with directly creating or saving about 650,000 jobs. Because these reports show that less than half of the spending through that date created or saved about 650,000 jobs, they confirm government and private forecaster’s estimates that overall Recovery Act spending has created and saved at least 1 million jobs…

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told POLITICO that the administration’s claim is based on “phony statistics.”

“The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ isn’t working, and no amount of phony statistics can change that,” Boehner said in an e-mail from his staff. “The president and his economic team promised the ‘stimulus’ would create jobs ‘immediately’ and unemployment would stay below eight percent. But America has lost more than three million jobs since then, and the unemployment rate is nearing double digits. While Washington keeps spending and piling more debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren, out-of-work families keep asking, ‘where are the jobs?’”