White House report: "stimulus" spending could have created (or saved) three times as many jobs!

The story, from the Weekly Standard:

Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

Well, I'm sure those 2.4 million jobs are all high-six-figure type jobs, so the tax revenues they generate will make it all back up soon enough. Right? Unless those evil Republicans manage to slip another tax cut through, that is.

Here's the good part:

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Or: they could have cut $100,000 checks to those 2.4 million people, and then another 2.4 million people, and then another 1.87 million people! The taxpayers don't come out ahead, but I'd've had a much better chance at landing one of those checks!

More: Doug Powers notes that the report came out on Friday. The day before a long holiday weekend. Right next to Fido's bone, I think. At least it looks like somebody was digging there recently.

Yet more: Jim Hoft uses the "Q" word.