What about the Obama administration's war on mathematics?

Every time somebody tries to test the logic of the president's economic policy using actual numbers, the White House starts screaming about space aliens.

You think I'm exaggerating? When the automotive consumer researcher Edmunds.com released an economic study last week concluding that the government's cash-for-clunkers giveaway cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold, the White House accused Edmunds of relying on statistics "covering car sales on Mars." (Who says we don't get bang for our NASA buck?)

The Edmunds study compared historical auto sales trends with sales figures during the recession to conclude that the $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program generated only 125,000 sales that wouldn't have occurred anyway. The Obama administration rebuttal didn't include a single number, just some hopeful rhetoric about (conveniently unmeasureable) "excitement" generated by cash-for-clunkers.

But even that response was a paragon of math wizardry compared to what the White House had to say when ABC reporter Jake Tapper asked about the cost of the jobs the Obama administration claims to have created with its stimulus programs.

This one started when the White House last week issued a report saying that it created or "saved" 640,000 jobs (economists say there's no way to measure the latter, but never mind), then immediately contradicted itself and said the real number was probably more like 1 million.

Tapper, using the more generous figure, divided the 1 million jobs into the $160 billion allocated by Sept. 30, then asked what seems like a reasonable question:

"Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?"

An outraged Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, promptly accused the reporter of "calculator abuse." Janet Reno is no longer attorney general, so that may not be a jailable offense, but it seems certain that Tapper can expect to have all his calculators seized and placed in foster homes.

In case you're wondering where Tapper went wrong, the Obama administration has not repealed the arithmetical rules of division. (Yet.) Bernstein merely said that the reporter should have included all the jobs the White House hopes to have created or saved by the end of next year.

The White House didn't even respond to the other interesting bit of stimulus math that was revealed last week.