A Sept. 16 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas carries the headline “Obama Predicts: His Plan Will Cost $235,263 Per Job.” But Obama never said that.
What he did say, according to Lucas:
“It’s estimated that the American Jobs Act would add two percentage points to the GDP, and add as many as 1.9 million jobs, and bring the unemployment rate down by a full percentage point,” Obama said, according to the official White House transcript of his remarks.
Lucas then performs a bit of crude math: “$447 billion divided by 1.9 million equals approximately $235,263.”
This isn’t the first time CNS has portrayed Obama as saying things he did not say. In 2009, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey asserted that Obama “referred to American opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens as ‘demagogues'” when, in fact, Obama was discussing a “pathway for legalization” for illegal immigrants — something for which Jeffrey provided no evidence is “amnesty” — and never used the word “amnesty.”
Similarly, Jeffrey claimed that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supported a bill “that would include giving amnesty to illegal aliens” when Reid never used the word “amnesty.”