(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Edward DeSeve its November Porker of the Month.  His precise title, as one of President Obama’s many “czars,” is Special Advisor to the President, Assistant to the Vice President and Special Advisor to the OMB Director for Implementation of the Recovery Act.  In announcing his appointment on March 26, 2009, the White House described his role as supporting Vice President Biden as he leads the implementation of the stimulus bill, and coordinating with the Office of Management and Budget.  Mr. DeSeve is also in charge of interagency coordination and ensuring that the stimulus money is spent “quickly and effectively.”  In other words, the stimulus bucks start with taxpayers and stop at his desk.

Mr. DeSeve told ABC’s Jake Tapper on October 30 that he had been “scrubbing” the job estimates so much that he now has “dishpan hands” and his “fingers are worn to the nub.”  However, the 640,000 jobs alleged to have been created or saved by the administration and listed on recovery.gov, as well as the inclusion of hundreds of non-existent congressional districts, have been ridiculed by talk shows, mainstream newspapers, and bloggers.

A November 19, 2009 article in The New York Times reported that Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board Chairman Earl Devaney “could not vouch for the Obama administration’s recent claims that the money had saved or created 640,000 jobs.  He suggested that the administration should have treated the number with more skepticism.”  When pressed about the origins of the phantom congressional districts, the Board’s Communications Director Ed Pound sputtered, “Who knows, man?  Who really knows?”  The Government Accountability Office testified before Congress on November 19 that more than 58,000 jobs had been created or saved by 4,000 stimulus recipients, even though they had not yet received any money.  On the other hand, there were 9,200 recipients that reported no job creation, despite receiving a total of $965 million.

The Obama administration told taxpayers that they would be able to track the stimulus money, and Mr. DeSeve is supposed to ensure the accuracy of the information.  Clearly, his “dishpan hands” were not clean enough.  The Accountability and Transparency Board has an $84 million budget.  In May, the administration gave $18 million to Smartronix, a company that has received $260 million in federal contracts since 2000, mostly through the Department of Defense, to beef up recovery.gov.  That should be more than enough to provide reliable reports.

The so-called stimulus package has been a bust.  Touted by the administration as a sure-fire way to rev up the nation’s stalled economic engine and create 3 to 4 million news jobs, 90 percent of which were supposed to have been private sector, the $200 billion that has been spent so far has mostly been used by states to backfill state Medicaid and education budgets, saving and creating jobs…in the public sector.

For presiding over the wasteful stimulus bill and a failed recovery.gov tracking website, CAGW names White House Special Advisor Edward DeSeve it’s November Porker of the Month.