I didn't plan on following up my Huffington Post thing about Republican stupidity with a Super Stupid post, but this was too moronic to pass up. Rick Santorum on CNN the other day tried to say that the stimulus actually forced a jobs loss, rather than a steady addition of jobs month-to-month -- nearly two million jobs in total since the passage of the stimulus.
SANTORUM: [Obama] passed a huge stimulus package that now we know, over the past two quarters, has actually cost American jobs, and that’s from the report of his own administration. They claimed in December that, uh, by the end of last year that they created 280 million jobs, and now they’re saying that they created only 240 million jobs. So look, in this, you’re talking about huge increases in spending.
ALI VELSHI: Senator, I’m going to ask you to restate that, I’ve never heard that in my life. Tell me again, what you just said.
SANTORUM: If you look at the report that came out on Friday, the President’s own economic advisers said that the jobs stimulus package actually created fewer jobs over the period of time, since the uh, since the stimulus package went in place than it did when they reported back in December. In other words, there’s 30 million less jobs as a result of the stimulus package.
VELSHI: That’s not a loss of jobs, Senator, that’s a smaller aggregation of jobs. You can’t go on a campaign, a national campaign with this kind of math Senator. It’s just incorrect…I know you’ve got a lot of interviews to do. You might want to check that math.
Indeed.
Velshi is right, of course. First, 280 - 240 = 40. Not 30. And just because there were fewer jobs created than anticipated, that doesn't mean there was a job loss. Doy. Plus, as ThinkProgress pointed out, adding 240 million jobs would be huge considering our total workforce is 150 million. Can you imagine?
Idiot.