Are You Sure You Understand How Obama's Plan Will Save Jobs?

A few weeks back I wrote a post called AT&T Lessons for Obama on Saving Jobs where I tried to understand how the Obama administration will save a job.  How will that saved job be measured? 

Sure the other day when he was at an event in Ohio where they were adding 25 new policemen to their role, you can count those folks.  However at a macro level, how do you measure saving millions of jobs? 

I still don't get it and an Associated Press article from over the weekend called Analysis: Obama's Ambitious Plans Raise Questions other people are starting to ask the same question.  Here's a quote from Montana Democrat Senator Max Baucus:

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, told Geithner last week.

"If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs," Baucus said. "You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

That's right Obama's plan could still lose jobs (or written another way unemployment rates continue to rise) yet Obama can celebrate hitting their goal by saving 3 million jobs.  How those saved jobs gets measured at this point is anyone's guess.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric