[Vision2020] Romney's Promise of 12 million Jobs Obviously has NoEconomic Basis

[Nicholas Gier]

 Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits ‘Jobs Plan’ Numbers Don’t
Compute

By Joe Conason, *Nation of Change, *Oct. 18, 2012



When innocent citizens asked about unemployment last night at the town hall
presidential debate on Long Island, would Mitt Romney again tout his plan
to create 12 million jobs? Unable to Etch-a-Sketch away that often repeated
claim — one that he has hired several conservative economists to endorse —
the Republican candidate had little choice. It's up on his campaign
website, it's there in his own well-advertised words, and it is the central
appeal of his candidacy for the non-billionaire voting bloc.

But there is a serious problem with that promise. It now stands exposed as
a complete fraud by Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact-checker, who
pinned upon it his highest (lowest?) prize of four “Pinocchios.”

Here is how Kessler reached that troubling conclusion. After requesting the
specific numbers behind Romney's jobs claim, he soon discovered that the
citations offered by the campaign made no sense, and, in fact, the
attempted deceptions were transparently obvious.

Romney's economic program has three basic elements that he says will
produce those 12 million jobs, as outlined in a TV ad quoted by Kessler:

*First, my energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs,
many of them in manufacturing. My tax reform plan to lower rates for the
middle class and for small business creates 7 million more. And expanding
trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over
12 million new jobs."*

In the studies cited by the Romney campaign, however, those figures
practically debunked themselves.

The study that supposedly justifies the 7 million jobs produced by tax
reform, written by a Rice University professor, covers a 10-year period —
not four years.

The study supposedly proving that his energy program will produce 3 million
jobs is a Citigroup report that doesn't even examine Romney's plan; it
includes fuel-economy requirements he has criticized and projects an 8-year
timeline. And the International Trade Commission report that supposedly
shows how an intellectual property crackdown on China will produce those
final 2 million jobs is similarly distorted, using outdated employment
figures and ridiculous speculation to reach a conclusion that even its
authors warn is "unclear."

For the coup de grace, Kessler quoted an email from Romney economic advisor
R. Glenn Hubbard confessing that "the 3+7+2 does not make up the 12 million
jobs in the first four years (different source of growth and different time
period)."

Kessler didn't attempt to estimate what, if anything, those studies might
indicate about the results of Romney's plan. There may well be no substance
to them at all. But it is possible to estimate a best-case based on a
revised timeline, taking 40 percent of the expected tax-reform-related jobs
plus 50 percent of the energy-independence-related jobs, which comes to a
measly 4.3 million jobs (the China-crackdown jobs are too phony to include
at all).

Describing the deficiencies of the Republican program, a famous man once
said, "it's arithmetic" — and as usual, the Romney campaign can't seem to
add or subtract without cheating.

So much for the "Jobs Plan." What understandably puzzled Kessler — who has
never hesitated to pillory Barack Obama — is why the Romney campaign would
send out supporting material that can be so easily and simply dismissed as
bogus. The answer may be that, with due respect to the *Post, *they can
reasonably expect to get away with such fakery in a media environment where
lies usually go unchallenged.

This article was published at NationofChange at:
http://www.nationofchange.org/bad-arithmetic-top-romney-economist-admits-jobs-plan-numbers-don-t-compute-1350567409.
All rights are reserved.
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