Another Four Pinnochio Claim By The Obama Campaign

Carrying on from yesterday's post about the WaPo fact checker slapping the latest Obama anti-Romney attack ad with four Pinnochios, here's another from the WaPo fact checker on yet another Obama campaign claim that's also been awarded four Pinnochios. In this case it's White House senior adviser David Plouffe's claims made on last weekend's Sunday talks shows about Romney's job creation record, specifically how he created six times the number of government jobs as he did private sector jobs while he was governor of Massachusetts.

First, Plouffe's claim, made on Fox News Sunday on June 17th :

“There was an amazing article the other day, I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal, where Republicans in Congress openly were saying, ‘we’re not going to do anything until the election on the economy, because we want to help Mitt Romney.’ ... With an economy that needs help right now, with the middle class that’s struggling, it’s an amazing thing.”

“For all of this talk about government, for every private-sector job created in Massachusetts by Governor Romney, six public sector jobs.”

Sounds incredible, doesn't it? Too bad it's based entirely upon very poor math, or at least a very poor understanding of math, something of which we all know the Obama Administration is guilty.

Here's the Fact Checker's finding:

In terms of the “amazing article” Plouffe referred to, we found no reports quoting Republicans talking openly about sitting idle on the economy to improve Romney’s election chances.

--snip--

As for Plouffe’s claim about the Bay State’s employment gains, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show Massachusetts added 22,400 private-sector jobs during Romney’s tenure. That means the state would need to have created 134,400 public-sector jobs in the same period for the White House adviser’s claim to be true.

That’s not even close to what happened. Massachusetts gained just 5,300 state-government jobs while Romney was in office. As such, the state added more than four private-sector jobs for every state-government job. This is pretty much the reverse of what Plouffe claimed.

Fact Checker goes on to explain the tortured path the White House folks must have followed to come up with the conclusion Plouffe used on camera. Call it an 'A' for effort, but an 'F' for the answer.

Is it any wonder such things like deficits and mounting national debt mean little to the Obama Administration? They. Can't. Do. The. Math!

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.