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The Economic Report of the President contradicts President Bush and other top officials.
By Brendan Nyhan
Last week, President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) released the 2003 Economic Report of the President to little notice from the press or public. Yet the report, which is produced by the professional economists and staff of the CEA, directly contradicts a number of public statements by the President and other administration officials on two key economic issues: the effects of tax cuts on revenue and the relationship between budget deficits and interest rates. (Read the whole column.)
Note: This column was cited as a primary source for a Washington Post article by Dana Milbank on Sunday, February 16.
2/13/2003 02:24:43 PM EST |
Bad Bush numbers on welfare reform (2/13)
By Bryan Keefer
The Bush administration's history of using misleading statistics to sell its domestic programs has now extended to welfare reform.
In January 14 remarks announcing a proposal to change the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF), President Bush claimed that "[B]ack in 1996, they were spending $7,000 per family to help people get to work. Under this budget request, the expenditure will be $16,000 per family. If $7,000 was good enough in 1996, it seems like $16,000 is good enough into '03 to help people get ahead." That statistic is repeated in the official White House fact sheet about the President's proposals. The figure was reported at the time without challenge by two large wire services, the Associated Press and United Press International.
This number, however, is a severe distortion bordering on an outright falsehood. As the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has pointed out, Bush arrived at his $16,000 figure by using deceptive math. The administration has evidently calculated total expenditures "to help people get work" by including federal and state funds spent on several programs including cash assistance, child care subsidies, case management for workers leaving public assistance, and state-level earned income tax credits, among others. This number totals about $33 billion annually (about $27 billion of which is spent on cash assistance). The administration calculates its $16,000 figure by dividing the $33 billion by the number of families receiving cash assistance. Yet CBPP points out that counting only the families who receive cash assistance excludes nearly one million families receiving TANF benefits which are not cash assistance (such as child care). The effect is to exaggerate the total spent on each family by roughly one-third.
The Bush administration has a deeply troubling history of creating misleading statistics to promote its tax and budget policies, most recently with regard to its proposed tax cut. The White House's statistical deceptions - too often repeated without challenge or correction by the media - stretch the public trust to the breaking point.
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Related links:
-More bad Bush numbers (Brendan Nyhan, 2/3/03)
-No truth dividends in tax debate (Brendan Nyhan, 1/31/03)
-State of the Union features more tax cut spin (Bryan Keefer, 1/29/03)
-Not your ordinary averages (Bryan Keefer, 1/24/03)
-Taxing the public trust (Bryan Keefer, 1/10/03)
2/13/2003 08:51:08 AM EST |
Filmmaker-provocateur Michael Moore wanted to expose America's
gun culture with his documentary, "Bowling for Columbine."
Instead, he again exposed his basic dishonesty.
By Ben Fritz
[This article was published in the Orange County Register on January 12. We are re-posting it here due to the Oscar nomination "Bowling for Columbine" received today.]
It's no exaggeration to say Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" has had the greatest impact of any documentary in this country since his own "Roger and Me" 14 years ago. After winning a special prize last spring at the Cannes Film Festival, Moore's exploration of the reasons behind America's high rate of gun violence went on to break "Roger and Me's" record for the highest box office gross of any nonmusical documentary. Now it's won the prestigious National Board of Review's "Best Documentary" prize, made over 100 critics' Top 10 lists, and been voted by members of the International Documentary Association as the best documentary of all time. But in their praise of Moore's provocative and often hilarious filmmaking style, critics have neglected the fact that "Bowling for Columbine" fails at the most basic task of a documentary: telling the truth. (Read the whole column.)
[Portions of this article were previously published on the Spinsanity website.]
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Related links:
-Spinsanity's coverage of Michael Moore
2/11/2003 10:03:46 AM EST |
Schorr feeds spin to listeners (2/11)
By Brendan Nyhan
In a commentary on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" yesterday [Real Audio], Daniel Schorr cited a proposed change in the federal school lunch program as evidence that President Bush is dismantling anti-poverty programs. But the charge is presented without adequate context, implying that Bush is actually cutting funding rather than changing the verification procedures used to evaluate eligibility.
Schorr states:
In emphasizing job growth as the primary weapon against poverty, President Bush has effectively shredded what President Reagan called "the safety net for the poor"... Federal money for poverty programs would be cut back as control of the programs was shifted to the states. Under the Bush budget, school lunches and breakfasts for low income children would be harder to come by. Funds for housing would be cut, creating a class of people who could be called "the working homeless."
Sandwiched in between two sentences about budget cuts, Schorr's phrasing implies that funding for school lunches and breakfasts is being cut or that income eligibility limits have been tightened. But this is not the case -- Bush actually proposed modest increases in funding for the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program (see this breakdown). Schorr is actually referring to the administration plan to require that parents demonstrate that their children are eligible for the school lunch program, which it explains as follows in the budget:
The National School Lunch program provides funds to states for meals served to children in schools. Children from households with incomes below 130 percent of poverty are entitled to free meals. However, studies conducted by USDA and data from national surveys suggest that a significant number of children approved for free lunches are from ineligible households. Because the information collected for school lunch eligibility is also used to allocate a wide array of federal, state, and local education dollars, errors in certifying children for school lunches can lead to a diversion of funds away from the lowest-income schools.
The administration also states that "[t]he proposal [to verify eligibility] will not reduce funding for the lunch program. Any savings that result from improving payment accuracy will be reinvested in the program."
Some poverty advocates and local program administrators have criticized the plan for adding administrative complexity and potentially deterring eligible families from applying. In this sense, Schorr's statement could be technically accurate. But the proposal is not a simple cut in funding, and citing it as evidence that President Bush has "shredded" the safety net without even mentioning the eligibility issue is misleading.
Unfortunately, Schorr isn't the first person to unfairly construe the administration's school lunch proposal by providing too little context. In an earlier USA Today story on the budget, Judy Keen and Lawrence McQuillan state that, "[t]o save money, Bush wants to eliminate some Amtrak service and ensure that school lunch recipients meet income requirements. The government 'must restrain the growth in any spending not directly associated with the physical security of the nation,' Bush said." This characterization implies that the school lunch changes are an attempt to limit federal spending, ignoring the funding increase for school lunch and breakfast programs and the pledge to reinvest savings in the programs.
Context is essential to providing fair criticism that readers can evaluate for themselves. Like Keen and McQuillan, Schorr has an obligation to present more when describing Bush's proposal.
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2/11/2003 09:50:59 AM EST |
Dowd's sloppy use of polls (2/9)
By Ben Fritz
The use and misuse of polls is a frequent topic of contention in political debate. One standard everyone should agree on, however, is that only those polls conducted scientifically are legitimate indicators of public opinion. That's a standard today's New York Times column by Maureen Dowd doesn't reach.
"Most Americans are willing to give Mr. Bush his war even though they are dubious that it will curb terror," Dowd states in one of the primary assertions of her piece. She then backs up her view by noting a poll conducted on CNN's website: "A CNN online poll shows that 82 percent think going to war with Iraq will provoke another attack on the U.S., as opposed to 13 percent who think it will prevent one."
In citing this poll, though, Dowd should also have cited a crucial piece of information that accompanies it. Just below the poll results on its website, CNN cautions the following: "This QuickVote is not scientific and reflects the opinions only of those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole."
In other words, the numbers are essentially meaningless.
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was careful to acknowledge this when he cited the poll on his show, "CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports," on Friday, stating, "Remember, of course, this is not -- repeat, not -- a scientific poll."
Dowd, however, leads her readers astray by making them think there's some evidence for her contention about what "Most Americans" think. With the proliferation of unscientific polls online, the public should be able to expect that when polls are cited in the media without qualification, they really mean something.
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Related links:
-Spinsanity's coverage of Maureen Dowd
2/9/2003 07:11:20 PM EST |
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