GAO Discovers Cost of Each DOE-Created ‘Stimulus’ Job: $194,213

It sounds as if the Department of Energy is using the same math the Administration used for predicting "other" jobs they supposedly created with stimulus funds and the same math President Obama used to figure out we have 57 States (48+2= 57).

From Rep Joe Barton -- (picture added)

A Government Accountability Office report released Thursday shows that the Department of Energy has spent more than $1.9 billion in so-called stimulus funds to create 10,018 jobs through May, an average of $194,213 spent per full-time job created.

“It looks like the Department of Energy got in over its head when it was handed $6 billion in stimulus money to create jobs by accelerating environmental cleanup work. This report says that DOE managed its timetables well enough, but it also indicates that so far, the jobs that DOE created cost $194,213 each,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis/Arlington, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “It’s hard to believe that the Energy Department isn’t creating a lesson in how to waste a lot of money in a hurry, with taxpayers joining the jobless as the latest victims of the recession. Americans need dramatically better thinking from the department’s leaders so the rest of their stimulus funding is more effectively used, too.”

DOE also reports it created 10,018 jobs through May of this year. However, the department has also used a more unorthodox methodology to inflate job creation in some of its reports, a methodology the GAO says may mislead the public. For example, using the method GAO was critical of, the agency reports roughly 20,000 jobs created through May of this year, counting the number of “lives touched” in some documents. More....

For a copy of the GAO report click here.