What jobs?

The White House has been boastful about the number of jobs the $787 million stimulus package has saved or created. But a hurried attempt to validate its claim has only caused confusion and generated misinformation.

Reports available on the government-sponsored Web site recovery.com have billions of dollars being spent in nonexistent congressional districts. Forty-five jobs were reportedly created in Texas's 58th district and 30 jobs in its 91st district. Only problem is that neither district exists.

Nationwide, more than $6 billion went to 440 nonexistent districts in the country and four territories.

The errors may be attributable to the size of the task tallying job results, which required thousands of reports from state and local governments, nonprofit groups, businesses and others receiving some of the funds. Careless data entry errors went unnoticed not only by the reporting agencies but government officials who collected the material.

The White House claims 640,000 jobs have been created or saved. However, jobs have been counted several times; temporary jobs have been reported as full-time positions, and job-counting guidelines have not been followed.

The totals do not take into consideration workers who have moved from one job to a "new" job. And money to pay for those new jobs came from businesses and those who work now.

The reports are an attempt by the administration to meet its pledge of transparency and accountability.

The inaccuracies are not necessarily willful deception, but they are embarrassing and needlessly open the program to criticism and political fallout. The government needs to do a better job.