Fresh out of the Obama playbook, the Trump Administration Says Pandemic Aid Saved 51 Million Jobs
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration touted its $660 billion small business pandemic aid program this week as a “wild success,” unveiling data that showed the initiative saved 51 million jobs.
“I’m skeptical of the total number,” said Philip Mattera, a director at Washington-based non-profit Good Jobs First, which focuses on government accountability.
Mattera said one “telltale” sign that some borrowers may have fudged the figures was the 3,728 companies which reported that they retained exactly 500 employees.
As companies were not compelled to provide job retention estimates to apply for the loan, 878,000 companies either reported that no jobs were retained or did not provide a number, a Reuters analysis found. That’s roughly 18% of all loans.
Two Liar Strategies
- Make it believable
- Make it so preposterous no one could possibly believe it
Trump clearly chose door number two.
This reminds me of Obama’s Pledge to Save or Create Jobs in 2009.
“Saved or created” has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs — and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could “save or create” an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will “save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.”
Obama vs Trump
Obama pledged to “save or create” 3-5 million jobs over two years.
I noted Obama creates 640,329 jobs at a cost of $323,739.83 per job
Trump claims to have saved 51 million jobs in a few months.
Trump needs a bigger lie because covid stimulus is about $3 trillion not $660 billion. If Trump saved 51 million jobs the cost was a mere $58,823 per job saved. And that assumes there will not be more stimulus plans.
But 51 million jobs is despite the fact there are nearly 20 million people on state unemployment rolls and another 10 million on Federal programs.
For discussion of the numbers please see Unemployment is Much Worse Than it Looks
Mish
Everybody wants transparency in government. Trump is quite transparent, as opposed to the other liars.
You have been drinking the Kool Aid again WildBull.
You didn’t get the joke. Trump’s lies are transparent. Smile before you scare people!
If these boards are any indication, I think Trump is in big trouble in November. People used to spend great effort defending him, but many of them have shifted to a full time argument that Covid-19 is just the flu, lockdowns are wrong, masks are evil, etc.
It’s like they’ve grown weary of Trump and now have a shiny new toy to play with instead!
Biden should just let Trump keep talking. Even at the debates Biden should cede all his time to Trump. It would be the best debate strategy ever against Trump.
Exactly. Biden should not even bother to debate Trump. Just let Trump keep digging the hole deeper and deeper.
Biden’s only winning strategy is to ignore Trump.
Economists Think Congress Could Create An Economic Disaster This Summer link to fivethirtyeight.com
The longer Trump stays in office the more I realize he is just an orange version of Obama on steroids…
Between Trump’s 51 million and Ivanka’s 14 million, 40% of all employed people owe their jobs to the Trump dynasty. Great minds note that his approval is at about 40%. Hmmm…
trump can’t even see his feet.
Tell that to all the unemployed and about to be unemployed people.
The only positive thing I have to say about Trump, especially in contrast to his 5 immediate predecessors, is that he has slowed down the war machine and has attempted to put it into reverse. Not sure where that fits in the whole ‘Trump is a racist’ narrative.
” he has slowed down the war machine and has attempted to put it into reverse”
Really? How much was the military budget decreased? I forget.
Forget no, you are ignorant and count lives in dollars.
How was C-C wrong? We can say that Trump didn’t start any new wars, but he did commit blatant acts of war against both Iran and Venezuela. He’s throwing more money at “defense” than ever before and is clearly no peacenik.
Aside from the MIC, he constantly argued for the Fed to lower rates and only seems to care about goosing the Dow higher. If you go by his actions rather than his words, Trump is hardly different than his predecessors.
President Trump has increased defense spending.
“President Donald Trump added $15 billion to former President Barack Obama’s FY 2017 budget, and he proposed a FY 2018 budget of $639 billion. This represented an increase of $56 billion, or 10 percent, over the proposed FY 2017 budget.” – Washington Post.
I fail to see how that supports your claim that ” he has slowed down the war machine and has attempted to put it into reverse”
If all you can do is to insult my intelligence and put words in my mouth, you have automatically lost your argument.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” ― Mark Twain
Give Trump credit,at least some of that $20 plus trillion in bailouts went into the Main Street economy, sure 90% went to bail out banks and Hedge Funds but under Obama the trillions doled out went entirely to banks and Wall Street after he took his cut leaving Main Street to rot on the vines as millions were foreclosed on and businesses closed permanently!
Why give him credit? Do you think he designed that program?
It is kind of surprising that some 20% of it went to small business. I almost got as much benefit as I got in my share of extra Federal Debt. Normally I just get extra debt, and no benefit at all.
tRump is the greatest liar of the world!
“I’m skeptical of the total number,”
…
Well, cross him off the White House Christmas card mailing list …
“Saved or created” has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs.
…
All smoke and mirrors.
Politicians love to hide behind hypothetical. What made Obama’s galling was his job czar – Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. Not only did he run GE into the ground, but one of the first things he did as job czar was to move a division of GE to India.
What, uh, exactly qualified him as job czar??
in these times, spending is more important than saving. please go and spend, spend, spend!
Trump lies like the average person breathes. It is difficult to comprehend a mind like that, much less how it was allowed into the White House. But here we are, four years into his “administration,” and we still marvel at his lies.