Due to national pressure, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has already begun purging Recovery.gov of the 440 phantom congressional districts, including the eight extra congressional districts they listed for West Virginia.

Instead of matching the jobs created/saved and the dollar amounts to the real congressional districts, Recovery.gov instead lumped the phantom information into one category, labeled “Unassigned congressional district.” 14 jobs were created/saved in this district, costing $2,387,321.

Pictured below is a screen grab from the Recovery.gov website from Monday, Nov. 16, 2009:

Now here is a screen grab from the Recovery.gov website with their edited data from this evening:

Despite these new edits, Watchdog.org Reporter Bill McMorris was kind enough to compile a list of the phantom congressional districts in all 50 states.

New Mexico Watchdog broke the story on Monday morning–the Obama Administration claimed to create jobs in congressional districts that did not exist. Those reporting errors, however, was not limited to New Mexico. A Watchdog study has found the stimulus has given $6.4 billion to 440 non-existent districts in all 50 states, D.C. and even four American territories. Click the links below to see what a Watchdog reporter has found in your state:

Watchdog.org – Your Guide to the Stimulus, District by (Phantom) District

Politicio Reporter Eamon Javers wrote a story today about how one Recovery official said he couldn’t vouch for any of the jobs data on Recovery.gov.

Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney was responding to a request for information by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In a letter to Issa dated Nov. 17, Devaney wrote, “Your letter specifically asks if I am able to certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable. No, I am not able to make this certification.”

However, Devaney said, by posting the information about stimulus spending on the Internet for every American to see, the administration will be able to correct any errors in the data as they are pointed out. “I am confident that we have established a process that will lead to increasingly higher levels of accuracy in the future,” he wrote.

Stimulus official: Can’t certify job stats – Eamon Javers – POLITICO.com

Washington Examiner Editorial Page Editor Mark Tabscott reported that a senior Obama official doesn’t see the problem with the erroneous data.

G. Edward DeSeve, Obama’s senior White House appointee overseeing Recovery.gov, defended it as a “great success” and dismissed the jobs data problems as mere “typos” and “data entry errors.” The problems “are relatively few and don’t change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data,” he added.

To the contrary, as every statistician well knows, such errors render a database useless as an analytical tool. DeSeve might as well as said “hey, quitcher gripin’ cauz it’s close enough for guvmint work.”

Mark Tapscott: One step forward, one back for government transparency | Washington Examiner

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