I think it was probably an honest mistake. Where I work, we provide some of the information on the jobs created. There is so much inforation to compile, in such a short amount of time, there are going to be some mistakes at first.

I'd guess it was a mistake, things don't move as fast as we'd like sometimes... patience is a virtue, right?!

The same reason Nancy Pelosi said " If we don't have an economic stimulus package five hundred million Americans will lose their job." A little difficult since there are only a three hundred million American citizens" Neither of them have a clue.

Well, he's painting himself into a corner with stuff like this. If it was a mistake, well, it's a pretty stupid mistake. It smacks of incompetence. If it wasn't a mistake, then he was trying to "cook the books" to make the employment numbers look better, which he desperately needs for the 2010 elections. That's dishonest. As the man who was hired to replace the dishonest/incompetent George W. Bush, he'd better get his act together quickly.

Political posturing for the 2012 primaries.

Hmmmm; it could be the same reason they claim that all americans will be able to afford health insurance some day; while saying 96% will be....they lie.

This Administration is dishonest,, there were several districts that didn't exist,,there's the thousand dollar lawn mower that was purchased and was claimed to have created 50 jobs, figure that one out. I'll bet when it's all said and done we will find out that the stimulus money is being given to Democratic supporters and covered up with bogus claims like these.

Hey Kiethold - just noticed you hit 100 - Congrats, man! Every time I turn on the news I feel like the Obama administration is treating us more & more like idiots & doesn't believe we'll actually look in to their claims. The stimulus package was a HUGE mistake & they know it. They seem to think that lies will cover it up....

If all of these bogus numbers were not in the positive it might be concidered a mistake, but not one of these "mistakes" report loosing jobs. That makes it look like it was made up to back up his claims that were being refuted.

Because he is hoping that the SHEEPLE WILL NOT NOTICE! I'm starting to think my conservative partner is RIGHT... He is trying to collapse our financial base and turn this country into a dictator/Nanny state. I have no health insurance, I'm diabetic. I'd love some health coverage....BUT NOT THIS ONE! I don't want my GOVERNMENT RUNNING MY HEALTH CARE...I DON'T WANT THEM TELLING ME I HAVE TO HAVE VACCINES THAT I DO NOT BELIEVE IN.... I was a Green...they got weird, so I reuped as a Dem so that I could vote in all of the elections....but I've never felt this way before...(not that I would swear to vote straight ticket anyway..I wouldn't) I didn't vote for THIS CRAP...but we have it now...from the frying pan into the fire!

Fact Check, the whole story. The individual states reported this to the federal government. these states may have an alternate motive for reporting higher employment rates. such as trying to draw new business to the states. but, once the numbers were reported, there was a press release. after that the feds checked the data, and found out it was wrong.

What olan Black said. Or I could pretend to be a Republican: It's an attempt by the Crypto-Fascistic Muslim Illuminati to once again insult our room temperature intelligence and show itself to be even less capable than our God/King Bu$h.

The numbers are bogus - indeed...the whole article is bogus. But frankly I'm not interested in anyone's propaganda - not the crap from my side - and certainly not the crap from the lunatic fringe right. You will have to do better than this....I'm just not interested in this bargain basement bullshit. All the best to everyone who posts to this question...sycophants and patriots alike....and I'll keep watching this space for the real dirt....but this?....this isn't even dust - let alone honest to god dirt. Have a good one guys!

As other posters have pointed out, Iowa sends this information to the President, and the Executive Branch reports what the states tell them. The claims were made by Iowa, and were corrected by the President as soon as the errors were discovered. Other errors in state reporting were corrected as soon as they were verified as errors. I think its really stupid that people are blaming the President for fake information made up not by the President, but by state governments in order to hide how they were misusing the stimulus money. Unlike a previous President's claims of having been given "fake information" being unverifiable because all of the information was "classified", President Obama's information is publicly available and errors can be discovered by anyone who has some spare time on a computer connected to the Internet. Attacking the President for the errors of state governments changes nothing. Attack the state governments which sent falsified information, or nothing will change in this country. Its probably safe to say that anyone who attacks the President for reporting what the states told him, instead of attacking state governments for sending the President false information, has no interest in fixing the system and just wants to do nothing while attacking the President. Of course, the referenced article decided to go beyond just reporting what had happened, and decided to make up additional stuff with a house of cards lacking quite a few cards on the bottom. The fact that Kevin Hall (the author) started off the article referring to "Barack Obama's Fantasyland" already warned the reader not to expect unbiased journalism. In the link referenced for this question (http://www.examiner.com/x-22564-Des-Moines-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d17-Obama-claims-he-created-Iowa-jobs-in-districts-that-do-not-exist), the writer claims that the current unemployment rate is 17.5%. The NY Times link the writer uses to justify this figure (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/business/economy/07econ.html?_r=2&th&emc=th) doesn't say that at all: the unemployment rate is still the official number of 10.2%. The 17.5% figure is a count of unemployed and under-employed people, or for the thick ones in the crowd, unemployed and EMPLOYED people. Last time I heard, someone who has a job is NOT unemployed, so they don't belong in the unemployment rate figures. In fact, the NY Times article in which the 17.5% figure is defined declares that people who have jobs (the 7.3% EMPLOYED people in the 17.5% figure) have seen their wages go up. So in other words the Des Moines Examiner article is attempting to use dodgy language to try and create additional woes for the President that do not yet exist. Kevin Hall even has the gall to say things like "the White House is fudging the numbers", while Kevin Hall is busy fudging the numbers in his article to claim that the unemployment rate is over 50% higher than it really is. In "Kevin Hall's Fantasyland", the unemployment rate may be 17.5%, but in the Real World it is still 10.2% and the 7.3% "under-employed" still saw their wages go up, an embarrassing detail for anyone trying to claim that the stimulus package had no effect whatsoever.

My understanding is that for auditing purposes, the people who got jobs were asked questions, including which congressional districts they lived in. Some didn't know and guessed. The false information was reported up the chain of command and no one ever notice the mistake. BFD

Why are you so focused on US when you don't live here?