Transportation Secretary Buttigieg and another official gave wrong estimates of how many jobs the plan would create
But some of these Biden officials have inaccurately described one of the figures they have made central to their sales pitch. And while Biden’s Friday description of this same figure was literally accurate, it was still pretty misleading by omission.
The White House official said Deese intended to say Moody’s found the infrastructure proposal would “help” create 19 million jobs, not that the proposal would itself create 19 million jobs. The Department of Transportation official said the same about Buttigieg.
Moody’s estimated that the economy would have added about 15.7 million jobs between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2030 if the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law had not been approved and if the infrastructure proposal never gets approved. In other words, Moody’s said that these two signature Biden plans would be responsible for about 3.3 million jobs above a baseline scenario in which there had been “no additional support” for the economy.
Biden’s language
Biden’s description of the “19 million” statistic was more correct than the ones offered by Deese and Buttigieg. But Biden’s language nonetheless invited listeners to come to an inaccurate understanding of what Moody’s concluded.
“They report that over the next decade they expect nonfarm payroll jobs…to be up by 19 million. Some of that is the Rescue Plan, some of that’s the Jobs Plan, some of that is underlying growth,” Bernstein said.
This article has been updated to include comments made by a Department of Transportation official after the article was initially published.
