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Fact-Checking the GOP Fact Check
By Jeff Fecke | October 11, 2006
Part One: Fiscal Irresponsibility
The Republican party of Minnesota put out a “fact check” of Amy Klobuchar in the wake of yesterday’s debate in Moorhead. But how accurate was the fact check? It depends on what the meaning of “accurate” is. Let’s first take a look at the fact-checking of the budget deficit.
Klobuchar Claim: “It’s about doing something about the fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.”While this statement is, in and of itself, impossible to fact-check (as it is not a claim), Klobuchar is clearly .trying to argue that Republicans in Congress have not been fiscally responsible.
GOP Refutation #1: “The government will soon report that the federal budget deficit for the just-completed 2006 fiscal year fell to about $260 billion.”
This statement is true, but misleading.
It is true that the federal deficit fell to $248 billion in fiscal year 2006, thanks to higher-than-expected revenues.1 However, looking at only last year’s numbers obscures the broader picture. By any reasonable measure, federal debt has skyrocketed under the Bush administration and the current Congress:
- During the eight years of the Clinton administration, the government ran a $192 billion deficit–an annualized rate of $24 billion. In the five budget years of the Bush administration, the government has run a $1.527 trillion deficit–an annualized rate of $305.4 billion.2
- The deficit is not far off of CBO projections. The 2006 budget was forecast to be at $269 billion, and 2007 at $267 billion. However, by 2008, the deficit begins climbing again–and only goes into balance by 2014 as a result of the end of the Bush tax cuts.3
- Meanwhile, the national debt has continued to grow unabated. As of this writing, the national debt stands at $8.56 trillion dollars.4 That’s about 47% higher than the debt in September of 2001.5
GOP Refutation #2: “The economy grew 2.6 percent in the second quarter….The economy has been growing for 19 straight quarters…The economy has grown by $1.46 trillion, or 14.8 percent, since President Bush took office….51,000 jobs were created in September….More than 6.6 million jobs have been created in the past seven months….The jobless rate fell to 4.6%–down from 5.1% the year before.”
These statements are used selectively.
Arguing about whether the economy is doing well is difficult, because in truth whether the economy is doing well is very much dependent on what segment of the economy you’re in. If you’re wealthy, there’s no question the past five years have been good for you. But a number of the statistics are not as rosy as they may seem, and there a number of other statistics that paint a far more complex picture of the economy in general.
First, let’s take economic growth. It is true that the second quarter of 2006 showed an annualized growth of 2.6%. Unfortunately, that represents a slowdown in growth from the first quarter, which posted a 5.6% annualized growth rate.6 Moreover, a 2.6% growth rate is nothing to write home about; from 1992 to 2005, only four years have shown less than 2.6% growth for the year–1995, 2001, 2002, and 2003. Indeed, the average growth rate during the Clinton administration was 3.73%. By the standards of the Bush administration, 2.6% is okay–the economy’s averaged 2.4% growth over the past five years.7
The growth rate of $1.46 trillion is not especially robust, either. In the first five years of the Clinton administration, the economy grew by $1.48 trillion–off of a much smaller baseline. That growth was equivalent to over a 20% increase–as opposed to the 14.8% growth that the GOP trumpets.8
The 51,000 jobs created in September is a number that seems, at first blush, to be good news. After all, any job created is good–right? Well, yes, but it’s still about 100,000 short of the number of jobs the economy needs to add in order to keep pace with a growing workforce.9 The 6.6 million jobs created in the past 37 months works out to about 178,000 a month–better, but still shy of the 201,000 a month created during the Clinton administration–and especially weak considering that the U.S. actually lost jobs during the first two years of the Bush administration. Indeed, during the five fiscal years since Bush took office, the economy has only produced 4.83 million jobs–and most of those have been due to increased government spending.10
We could go on and on–the consumer confidence jump touted is the third-lowest month this year, and comes off of the lowest month this year;11, real wages for those in the bottom half of the economy fell by 1.3% from 2004 to 2005;12 and of course we haven’t even touched on the subject of health care cost increases.
In short, while the GOP can argue that all is rosy, Klobuchar’s sentiment–that we need to do something about fiscal irresponsibility–is well-supported by facts. Far better supported, in fact, than the GOP’s fact-check.
NEXT: Fact-Checking the Fact-Check on the National Intelligence Estimate
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1Carmichael, Kevin, and Brendan Murray. “U.S. Budget Deficit Falls to $248 Bln, Four-Year Low.” Bloomberg.com, October 11, 2006.
2Congressional Budget Office
3Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2005 to 2014.”
4Brillig.com’s National Debt Clock.
5TopTips.com.
6U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, ” News Release: Gross Domestic Product and Corporate Profits.”
7 Ibid.
8Bureau of Economic Analysis.
9Bloomberg. “U.S. August Payrolls Rose 144,000; Jobless Rate Falls.” September 3, 2004.
10JobWatch.org.
11The Conference Board, “The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Posted a Gain in September.”
12JobWatch.org.
(Cross-Posted from MinMon)
Topics: Amy Klobuchar, Deficit, Economics, Mark Kennedy | No Comments »