You may have seen a misleading Associated Press story this morning on the accuracy of Recovery Act job reports that were posted earlier this month on Recovery.gov. On the same day that we learned that the economy has begun to grow again for the first time in over year, the very critics who opposed economic rescue from the beginning are now trying use this misleading story to twist the truth about the early success of the Recovery Act.
Here is what you should know:
Governors, mayors, county executives, private businesses and community organizations across the country submit reports to Recovery.gov so that you can get an unprecedented look at how your taxpayer dollars are being spent creating jobs and boosting the economy through the Recovery Act. These reports are not from the federal government – but from the very people putting Recovery funds to work.
Our top priority is ensuring that, when the reports are posted on Recovery.gov tomorrow, you will get the most accurate look possible at what has taken place with the Recovery Act over the last eight months. That’s why we have been working with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board – an independent oversight body – and the actual people that submitted the reports to conduct an extensive three-week review of them.
Three business days into the review, the Board posted a preliminary portion of those reports – just federal contracts which represent less than 2 percent of the Recovery Act and are a sliver of the information collected – on Recovery.gov so that you could get a look at what had been turned in initially. We support the Board’s act of transparency – but were clear that day that we considered the reports "partial and preliminary" and noted that it was "too soon to draw any global conclusions" from them.
Our twenty-day review wraps up today and we can say with confidence that the full set of reports going up tomorrow – corrected versions of the reports posted on October 15th, and many more new reports being posted for the first time now — are far sharper than the initial ones you saw two weeks ago. In fact, our review process had already caught four out of five items that AP’s misleading story cites as “over-counting” jobs. With every review of the reports, with every call to the person filing them to confirm them, the information has gotten better and better – and we are looking forward to their public posting tomorrow. It will be a historic moment for government transparency.
Here are the real facts on AP’s misleading story: