CNN host Ali Velshi gave Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum some math advice Tuesday after the former Pennsylvania senator claimed President Barack Obama’s stimulus had resulted in 30 million fewer jobs.
“[Obama] passed a huge stimulus package that now we know, over the past two quarters, has actually cost American jobs, and that’s from the report of his own administration,” Santorum asserted. “They claimed in December that by the end of last year that they created 280 million jobs, and now they’re saying that they created only 240 million jobs.”
“Senator, I’m going to ask you to restate that, I’ve never heard that in my life,” Velshi interrupted.
“If you look at the report that came out on Friday, the President’s own economic advisers said that the jobs stimulus package actually created fewer jobs over the period of time, since the stimulus package went in place than it did when they reported back in December. In other words, there’s 30 million less jobs as a result of the stimulus package,” Santorum explained.
“That’s not a loss of jobs, Senator, that’s a smaller aggregation of jobs,” Velshi noted. “You can’t go on a campaign, a national campaign with this kind of math Senator. It’s just incorrect.”
“One report says that there were 280 and now there are 240,” Santorum insisted.
“I know you’ve got a lot of interviews to do. You might want to check that math,” Velshi advised. “It’s dangerous to go around saying that the stimulus didn’t create jobs.”
“Look it up,” Santorum said.
“Let’s not make a campaign slogan out of something that’s incorrect. I think you might thank me for the guidance but it’s your campaign so you do what you see fit,” Velshi added. “Let’s just be clear: that’s just not right information.”
Think Progress pointed out that there are currently 13.9 million people unemployed, and only 153 million in the entire U.S. labor force.
“If the Obama administration had created 240 to 280 million jobs, the unemployment crisis would have been solved several times over, and America would have so many jobs that it would need to start employing workers from all over the world just to fill all the available positions,” Think Progress’ Pat Garofalo wrote.
Watch this video from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast July 5, 2011.
