But Is It True?

On April 2, the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy added an astounding 308,000 jobs in March. The financial markets applauded, sending the Dow Jones up by 97 points and the dollar significantly higher. After years of stagnant employment rates and a "jobless recovery," it's good news indeed.

But is it true?

The fact that the question is even being asked is an indicator of how untrustworthy the Bush Administration has become. After all, we have been down this road before.

In the fall of 2003, when the White House was pressing Congress to pass the much-vaunted Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill, much of the opposition said that it would massively subsidize the health-care and pharmaceutical industries while delivering only token benefits to senior citizens. About a dozen Republican "deficit hawks," already uneasy about the skyrocketing federal budget deficit ($521 billion and climbing), complained about the $399 billion price tag and voted yes only after severe pressure. After the bill was safely passed into law, the White House announced that the "recalculated" cost would be $550 billion - a full third more than Congress and the public had been told.

Several weeks ago, it was revealed that the Administration had known the price tag would be higher all along, and deliberately cooked the books to get the bill passed. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, had originally calculated that the bill's ten-year price would in fact be $550 billion. His then-supervisor, Thomas Scully, ordered him to suppress the figure and substitute a more politically acceptable $399 billion on pain of termination. (Scully has since left the government and become - surprise, surprise! - a highly paid health-care lobbyist.)

There is a considerable difference between putting a political spin on the numbers to make them look good and altering the numbers in the first place. The first is simply normal politics, while the second is blatantly dishonest. Does no one in the Administration remember that this is how Enron got flushed down the toilet?

Now, when the White House is rightfully criticized on its job-creation performance in an election year, along comes a highly favorable job report. The question has to be asked: are the job numbers genuine, or are they just making it up - again?

Not to put too fine a point on it, the White House has only itself to blame for such speculation. Having been shown that they will use intentionally fake math to get a bill passed, one can be forgiven for now looking at each and every set of numbers from the Administration with a skeptical eye.