House Republicans note that the President, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, continue to throw around the figure/boast/guess of 3.5 million jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus. But even the Democrats’ preferred economists, Mark Zandi of Moodys.com and Allan Sinai of Decision Economics Inc., think that’s overestimating the impact by about one million.

Of course, when the stimulus fails to create the expected number of jobs, the response from Nancy Pelosi and company isn’t that the stimulus didn’t work; it’s that the circumstances call for a second edition of the same.