WH: Stimulus errors 'don't change' recovery act's effects

White House officials on Tuesday dismissed criticism that its recovery act reporting efforts were riddled with inaccuracies, stressing its mistakes were "relatively few, and don't change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data."

A day after reporters discovered that the White House's stimulus hub, Recovery.gov, incorrectly calculated jobs created by federal funds in congressional districts that do not actually exist, White House adviser Ed DeSeve acknowledged the errors as "frustrating."

But DeSeve, in a post this afternoon on the White House's blog, also touted the Obama administration's campaign to make data publicly available as a "huge success," unrivaled in size or scope. He admitted "transparency is going to be messy," but he stressed it was "better than the alternative" of not telling voters about their money at all.

"When you consider the sheer number of reports that had to be filed, processed, and posted; the fact that this had never been done before; and the very short time to check reports and make sure they were right – the data collected and posted is very impressive," DeSeve wrote. "Unfortunately, it would be hard to know that by reading some of what’s been written and said about recipient reporting."

The Obama administration has nonetheless fielded an outpouring of frustration over the past week because of inaccuracies in its stimulus data.

Monday's news that the White House had to purge more than 60,000 jobs from stimulus reports because the numbers were suspect angered some lawmakers. But this morning's revelation that Recovery.gov reflected jobs and dollar amounts in congressional districts that did not exist made some, including House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.), nearly apoplectic.

Consequently, DeSeve on Monday explained that errors are often more obvious as a result of transparency, not despite of it. He also attributed the recent string of lapses regarding congressional districts to simple human error, and he cautioned those errors in no way meant the White House was not making progress stimulating the economy.

"Critics – some well intentioned, some who just wanted to discredit the Recovery Act -- have had over two weeks to try to make hay with the data," he said. "But no criticism has come close to discrediting the larger and most important point: that the Recovery Act has helped save or create more than 1 million  jobs across America and across various sectors of the economy."

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