Ann Coulter’s phony budget math (her response to the Nutting graph) - Joan Walsh rips her apart
Thursday, May 24, 2012 10:00 AM EDT
By Joan Walsh
Pethokoukis quarrels with Nuttings assigning Bushs budget to Bush, because Obama chose not to reverse that elevated level of spending; thus he, along with congressional Democrats, are responsible for it. Exactly how one president undoes the spending approved by another president under a different Congress goes unexplained. The AEI pundit also argues that we should look at federal spending as a percent of GDP, and he notes thats gone up under Obama, attempting to prove that Nutting is mistaken but thats a useless metric during a recession, which by definition shrinks GDP.
Coulter goes even further (of course). It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obamas entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush. (The italics are in the original; theyre where the good writing is supposed to be.) She continues: That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in
Bushs column.
Shockingly, Coulter is
wrong. First of all, only about $120 billion of the stimulus was spent in fiscal year 2009 and Nutting counted it in Obamas column. He also included new funds appropriated under Obama and the Democratic congressional majority for the child health insurance program and other projects. And it says so quite clearly on the nifty chart Coulter finds fault with: $140 billion spent in the 2009 budget year is plainly attributed to Obama. It also says so in the text of the story, for people who dont read charts.
Coulter also claims that Nuttings piece has been ignored by the New York Times, but in fact David Firestone weighed in today, and made a point I should have made: Its actually sad that a Democratic president is kvelling about cutting the rate of federal spending growth to its lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower (actually, I made that point last August). Firestone notes that various budget deals aim to cut discretionary spending by $800 billion over a decade, by trimming education, food, housing, transportation and job training programs. This category of spending, which used to be 5 percent of the gross domestic product in Nixons days, is heading down to less than 2 percent, Firestone notes. Pethokoukis and Coulter ought to be applauding.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/24/ann_coulters_phony_budget_math/singleton/
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)i have`t heard from her for awhile. maybe she was deflated and someone thought she`d be useful...
rocktivity
(44,585 posts)"DOWN!!!"
rocktivity
zbdent
(35,392 posts)when it comes to math ...
longship
(40,416 posts)She needs to eat a burger and fries, or something.