At first, then candidate Obama said his administration would “create” jobs, which then slowly morphed into “create or save” once he became president. He repeatedly claimed the so-called stimulus was to already have saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs, and by boosting the stimulus spending he could “save or create” an additional 600,000 jobs this summer.

In an article from the Wall Street Journal entitled The Media Fall for Phony ‘Jobs’ Claims, the method that the Obama administration is using to come up with those numbers is entirely dubious at best.

To begin with, the number is pure fiction — the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being ’saved.’ And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it.”

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama’s jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one — not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics — actually measures “jobs saved.” As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama’s jobs claims are “based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs.” Nice work if you can get away with it.

According to the Washington Times: “One thing that’s important to note is that the White House will be able to get real, after the fact, hard results only on about one third of the stimulus spending. …”There is no mechanism available for collecting data on actual job creation” from the other two thirds of the bill.”

The economy has lost approximately 1.6 millions jobs since Congress approved the stimulus (some put the figure over 2 million now), and the unemployment rate has now hit 10 percent in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

Things may have been better without the massive government spending spree (aka stimulus). In fact, Romer and Bernstein’s projections show that without the stimulus, unemployment would rise to just above 9 percent in December 2009, staying there through most of 2010 before falling off in early 2011. Christina Romer, is chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and Jared Bernstein is Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist.

Obama said back in February, “If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.” These scare tactics were used to justify profligate spending, which also overestimated the effect billions of taxpayer dollars would have on employment. Under the estimate, the stimulus plan would have kept unemployment below 8 percent and decreasing by October of this year. But as already reported, that number has now topped 10 percent in some parts of the country.

Defenders of the administration argue that only small part of the second stimulus is in the economy so far, and this is due to government being inherently slow and inefficient. Yet astoundingly, they still clamor for even greater government control over the economy, including health care. If government were a business, it would have been bankrupt long ago. Speaking of which, Joe Biden declared: “You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” If this is the Democratic leadership’s understanding of economics, it’s no wonder why things are getting worse.

The first and smaller stimulus under Bush did not work, but the problem was not with the size of the stimulus (nor how long it takes to get into the economy). The Obama administration has rapidly increased the spending, which is essentially a Keynesian economic approach. Like most fashionable theories of the political left, it does not work. Keynesianism is irrational as an economic model and historically discredited. Obama’s economic policies must be evaluated honestly — not with spurious “saved jobs” that allow him to claim success no matter what happens in the future. The fact is job losses have accelerated above projections since Obama dramatically increased government spending. “Saved jobs” is a meaningless economic term designed to give political cover for failed policies. If Bush’s growth of government placed America in the frying pan, Obama’s will take us into the fire.

Video: Obama’s So-Called Stimulus: Good For Government, Bad For the Economy