Just to illustrate the speciousness of Obama's preposterously unprovable claim that saved jobs are measurable, you should know that two administration financial officials, Ed DeSeve and Jared Bernstein, were unable to say how many of the 640,329 jobs were saved and how many were created. It's also noteworthy that Obama promised in January that more than 90 percent of the stimulus jobs would be in the private sector, but more than half -- 325,000 -- were in education alone.
Then there's Obama's assertion that he prevented responsible homeowners from losing their homes, when everyone knows that included in his unconstitutional $75 billion government bailout of mortgagors were payments to those millions who irresponsibly did not pay their mortgage debts.
As for his claim that he has cut taxes for middle-class families, he didn't mention that his treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, and his National Economic Council director, Larry Summers, have already refused to rule out the possibility that Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. Of course, the promise would already have been permanently breached if Obama had gotten his way on the cap-and-tax bill and Obamacare, each of which would have necessarily resulted in middle-class tax hikes, just as his planned double-digit trillions of new government debt would necessitate across-the-board tax increases just to service the interest.
Of all the words Obama uttered, though, nothing came close in sheer audacity to his announcement that he had planned "a forum at the White House on jobs and economic growth ... to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again."
Isn't this the precise combination of words Obama used to sell his stimulus package in the first place: "creating jobs to get the economy moving again"? The answer is yes. A few months ago, Obama wasn't looking for experts to tell him how to stimulate the economy. He claimed to be (SET ITAL) the (END ITAL) expert with the magic bullet solution.
Having demonstrably failed, Obama is now convening a photo-op summit, designed to deflect blame and personal accountability for his policy failures and to provide an excuse to give us more of the same, because you can bet that he won't be inviting Friedman free marketers, but academic adherents to failed Keynesian thinking and businesspeople whose judgment and policy endorsement he has purchased or will purchase with your money.
Despite Obama's claim that he recognizes that "there are limits to what government can and should do," more and more Americans realize he believes quite the opposite and that he is committed to doing everything in his power to continue to dismantle the economic system that has made America the most prosperous nation in history. We don't need a summit, but midterm elections to restore to power those who believe in the free market -- among other enduring American ideals.