White House says stimulus funded 3 million jobs

WASHINGTON - Even as President Barack Obama’s administration claimed that the $787 billion stimulus had saved or created about three million jobs, the US Chamber of Commerce said he had “neglected” to focus on job creation.

In its latest stimulus report released Wednesday, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers using two different models estimated the Recovery Act has already created between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs.

Hours after the report, chairperson of the CEA, Christina Romer, told the Congress’ Joint Economic Committee the US economy has “unquestionably been going through a period of turbulence” recently.

But she doesn’t believe a full-blown double-dip recession will occur, but deflation is a risk.

The American economy overall shed 125,000 jobs in June, according to a Labour Department report earlier this month. And since the start of the recession, 8 million jobs have been lost. The government’s next job report is due August 6.

The Federal Reserve’s latest economic forecast was more pessimistic when on Wednesday it issued the minutes of its June meeting.

The Fed now predicts the unemployment rate would be between 9.2 percent to 9.5 percent this year, slightly higher than previous estimates.

Meanwhile, the US Chamber of Commerce slammed Obama’s economic policies Wednesday, saying administration officials “took their eyes off the ball” and “neglected” to focus on job creation.

A letter posted to the business group’s site said the administration “vilified industries while embarking on an ill-advised course of government expansion, major tax increases, massive deficits and job-destroying regulations.” The letter also included “some different approaches to unlock frozen capital and jolt our economy back to life.”

The six suggestions are: create a growth and jobs tax policy; restore fiscal health; expand trade and export-driven jobs; rebuild and expand infrastructure; ease regulatory burdens; and eliminate uncertainty for business owners.

In a speech at the jobs summit, Chamber president Tom Donohue said lawmakers were “spending at astronomical levels - we’re setting ourselves up to be the next Greece,” a reference to the debt crisis plaguing the European nation.