<h1> Bad Arithmetic: Top Romney Economist Admits ‘Jobs Plan’ Numbers Don’t Compute</h1>
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By Joe Conason, <i>Nation of Change, </i>Oct. 18, 2012</p>
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<p> </p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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.”</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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:</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><i>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."</i></p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">In the studies cited by the Romney campaign, however, those figures practically debunked themselves.</p>
<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;font-size:14px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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."</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-size:14px">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)."</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-size:14px">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).</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-size:14px">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.</p><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:17px;font-size:14px">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 <i>Post, </i>they can reasonably expect to get away with such fakery in a media environment where lies usually go unchallenged.</p><p>
This article was published at NationofChange at: <a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/bad-arithmetic-top-romney-economist-admits-jobs-plan-numbers-don-t-compute-1350567409">http://www.nationofchange.org/bad-arithmetic-top-romney-economist-admits-jobs-plan-numbers-don-t-compute-1350567409</a>. All rights are reserved. </p>
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