Paul Krugman- Discretionary Truthiness

I keep hearing Republicans say that Obama has increased nondefense discretionary spending by 80 percent; it’s one of those “facts” that apparently everyone on the right knows. So where does that come from?

Well, it turns out that Politifact is on the case — but gets it wrong, too, although not as wrong as the Republicans.

The number comes from taking nondefense discretionary spending as reported — which rose 26 percent from 2008 to 2010 (Table 8.7) — and then adding the entire discretionary spending part of the stimulus.

Politifact says that this is misleading because not all of the stimulus funds were spent in 2010. But it’s much worse than that: stimulus spending is already in those discretionary spending numbers. If you look at the table, you’ll see bulges in spending on education and ground transportation that go away after 2011; that’s the stimulus.

So this GOP talking point is a complete fraud; it’s based on counting the same spending several times over.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/discretionary-truthiness/