‘Mitt Math’ for his jobs plan gets four Pinnochios from Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I have been telling you that "Mitt Math" doesn't add up for months now. Today the Washington Post's fact checker Glenn Kessler exposes the fraud of "Mitt Math" for his jobs plan, awarding him four Pinnochios. Mitt Romney’s ‘new math’ for jobs plan doesn’t add up.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line discusses Team Obama's reaction. Obama campaign blasts Romney 12 million jobs plan as fraud:

As expected, the Obama campaign is pouncing on today’s Post debunking of Mitt Romney’s claim that his plan would create 12 million jobs. From Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt:

“In yet another instance of Mitt Romney’s campaign not
telling the truth, it turns out that the numbers behind his ‘jobs plan’
just don’t add up. For months, Romney has pledged to create 12 million
jobs over his first term — a number economists project will be created
under current policy — but the numbers he’s cited for his claims aren’t
based on evaluations of his plan and are ‘squishy’ at best. Mitt Romney
thinks he can run out the clock by not coming clean about policy
details, but the American people deserve the truth about his plans. And
the truth is that economists have concluded that the severe cuts he
would make like education, research and development, manufacturing and
infrastructure could eliminate 1 million jobs and shrink economic growth
by 1 percent.”

The question now is whether Obama will seize on this new report at
tonight’s debate to expose Romney’s jobs plan as a bill of goods during
what may prove the highest profile, highest stakes of this election,
further elevating the Post’s findings.

By any reasonable measure, this should be a big, big story. Romney’s
claim that he will create 12 million jobs is central to his candidacy’s
entire argument. It is the whole basis for Romney’s positioning of
himself as the alternative to the unacceptable status quo — high (though
falling) unemployment, and a too slugginh recovery — under Obama. The
question of which candidate’s plans would actually fix the economic
crisis is what this whole presidential campaign is supposed to be all
about. And we’ve now learned that the studies the Romney campaign itself
cites to back up the claim that his plan would create 12 million jobs
don’t do anything of the kind.

As Steve Benen puts it,
“Romney’s central jobs argument” has been “exposed as fraudulent.”
Benen adds: “I don’t seriously expect this to rock the presidential
campaign, but it certainly has that potential. The revelation is simply
that brutal.”

Yes, it is. Or it should be, anyway.

Sadly, we all know that the feckless media villagers will focus on the style and presentation of the candidates as actors during tonight's debate rather than focus on the substance of their policy positions, or fact checking the many lies that Willard "Mittens" Romney is peddling to voters.

PREVIOUSLY: The New York Times’ Jackie Calmes looked at Obama’s American Jobs Act.

While economic forecasts are not definitive, in that they are predictions, Macroeconomic
Advisers, a St. Louis-based firm that the Federal Reserve often uses,
has projected that the Obama jobs plan could increase economic growth by
1.25 percentage points and add 1.3 million jobs in 2012. Moody’s
Analytics, another firm, has estimated it would add two percentage
points and up to 1.9 million jobs.

The "less-than-do-nothing" Tea-Publican Congress failed to enact the American Jobs Act, and other job proposals made by the Obama administration, forgoing some 2 million new jobs in the economy.

The bottom line is simple: One candidate has a jobs plan, and the other doesn’t.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein says The Romney campaign’s job math is just as bad as its tax math.