PolitiFlub: the inflation miscalculation

Have I mentioned that journalists and math remain a volatile combination?

Seems like I have.

PolitiFact Oregon gives us yet another example.  I stumbled across this story from 2010 while looking at PolitiFact's history of applying inflation adjustments to dollar figures said to represent a doubling.

It's crazy what you can find in PolitiFact's archives.  Republican Scott Bruun claimed federal government spending doubled between 2000 and 2009.

PolitiFact Oregon stumbled when it ran the numbers:

At first glance, it appears he is right. His campaign cited numbers from the federal Office of Management and Budget that show total federal spending in 2000 was $1.78 trillion. By 2009, spending increased to $3.5 trillion. So that’s about double in unadjusted dollars.

But if you account for inflation, the spending total is $1.78 trillion in 2000 and goes to $2.29 trillion in 2009. That’s only a 29 percent increase.

I wonder what inflation calculator was used?  Apparently not this one:

www.bls.gov

Go ahead.  Visit the URL and try it.  One can also plug in the 2000 baseline and adjust it to 2009 dollars.  It works either way.  But don't adjust 2000 dollars to 2009 dollars and adjust 2009 dollars to 2000 dollars in the same equation.  And in particular do not plug the $1.78 trillion figure into the first box, adjust that year 2000 figure into 2009 dollars and then take that result as the increase in federal spending.

Yet the latter is apparently close to what PolitiFact Oregon did.  It's the type of mistake one might call "bungling" yet it has lasted unmolested in PolitiFact's archives for nearly a year.

Charles Pope of PolitiFact Oregon, you've been noticed.

Bill Adair, you let that error pass?

The percentage increase was about double what PolitiFact Oregon reported.   Fact check that, PolitiFact.