June 2009 Flashback: Obama Promises 600,000 Jobs Will Be Created From Stimulus

"So I'm pleased to know that having put the infrastructure in place, having gotten your teams up and running, many of the criteria by which money is going out in a responsible way that protects taxpayers, having been created, now we're in a position to really accelerate. And so the goal here is that we're going to create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.

Joe highlighted some of the specific commitments that we're making to keep the recovery moving forward: keeping teachers in the classroom, cops on the streets, providing summer jobs for youth that are particularly hard-hit in this job market, breaking ground on hundreds of new projects all across the country in clean energy and transportation, and so on.
And we're going to do it continuing to operate in a transparent fashion so that taxpayers know this money is not being wasted on a bunch of boondoggles. And I think that sometimes good news comes in what you don't hear about, and you haven't heard a bunch of scandals -- knock on wood -- so far.

That doesn't mean that this thing is going to be flawless, but I think it is fair to say that given the speed with which we've acted, all of you can be proud that many of the safeguards and transparency measures that have taken place so far seem to have worked. We've got to keep that up because at a time when everybody is tightening their belts, the last thing the American people want to see is that any of this money is being wasted."