Earlier today, Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Board, stated in a letter to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Darrel Issa that he was not able to "certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable." The statement came in response to a letter Issa sent Devaney in advance of the Committee's stimulus oversight hearing on Nov. 19, a letter which asked Devaney if he was "able to certify personally" that the Recovery.gov number was accurate, and if not, if the Board would prominently display a warning on the site to that effect. Devaney's apparent disavowal of the jobs numbers became instant news, with Politico and ABC News jumping on it immediately, and Issa used the statement as evidence that the Administration could not validate the job numbers it has been citing over the past month. The truth is, Devaney's comments are not news in any way.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) relayed an interesting story yesterday about how a little-known tax treaty negotiated under the George W. Bush administration may become the model for lawmakers in Washington looking to crack down on tax havens.

Ugh oh, a recent article in National Journal (subscription required) quotes several members of Congress, including Senate Budget Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), expressing strong interest in the creation of a bi-partisan debt-reduction commission with binding recommendation powers to Congress. It seems Conrad, Wolf, and other budget hawks see the administration's need to raise the debt ceiling as the perfect opportunity to press for the creation of such a body. While there's nothing wrong with a debt commission per se, I find the timing and details of this scheme troubling for a number of reasons.

A paragraph in an article written by Mike Stuckey on MSNBC.com insinuates that the White House manipulated the Recovery.gov job count total to match its previous claims of job growth numbers. I can't tell if Stuckey simply has his facts wrong, is intending to mislead to create controversy, or has been misled by an unscrupulous source.