On Day 81, “19 million jobs” became the new “$2,000 stimulus checks.”

File Alongside The “$2,000 Stimulus Checks.”

Remember the “$2,000 stimulus checks” that then-president-elect Joe Biden said Americans would receive if they voted for Democrats in the Georgia runoff elections? Well, there’s a new whopper in town. The “19 million jobs” his $2 trillion “infrastructure” plan would supposedly create.

A new Moody’s Analytics report that’s been incorrectly cited by the Biden White House outlines a scenario where the American Jobs Plan boosts expected job creation by 2.7 million, totaling 19 million new jobs. The plan is not expected to itself “create 19 million jobs,” as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has falsely claimed.

Corrected by Fox News’ Chris Wallace on the wild overstatement, Buttigieg admitted Sunday, “I should have been more precise… It’s part of a scenario that Moody’s says will add 19 million jobs.”

Biden, economic adviser Brian Deese, and press secretary Jen Psaki have all recently deployed the claim in various formulations that obscure that 16.3 million jobs were projected in the Moody’s Analytics study without the American Jobs Plan.

• Biden said on April 2, “Independent analysis shows that if we pass this plan, the economy will create 19 million jobs—good jobs, blue-collar jobs, jobs that pay well.”
• Psaki also said on April 2, “A report from Moody’s Analytics that came out yesterday afternoon projects that the economy will create 19 million jobs over the next decade if Congress passes the American Jobs Plan.”
• Later, Psaki was asked, “Can you explain a little bit more about how the White House came up with that figure?” She replied, “It’s not our figure. It’s actually a figure by Moody’s.”
• In the same briefing, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh was also asked about the figure, and did not clarify what it represented.
• Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) said on NBC Saturday that Biden’s plan could create “tens of millions of good paying jobs.”

Other analysts haven’t given the plan such sparkling previews. An analysis from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that “considered together, the tax and spending provisions of the [American Jobs Plan] would increase government debt by 1.7 percent by 2031 but decrease government debt by 6.4 percent by 2050. The AJP ends up decreasing GDP by 0.8 percent in 2050.”

Tens of millions of new jobs to be created down the line might not seize the public’s imagination like the prospect of a $2,000 stimulus check in their own mailbox—but it’s equally imaginary.