Grading PolitiFact: Jeb Hensarling and the ballooning budget

After a blip in Alan Grayson's favor, cherry picking stats is once again a sin over at PolitiFact.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor

Analysis:

CSPAN helped provide context beyond that provided by PolitiFact:



Transcript mine, orange-yellow highlights indicate the portion used in the PolitiFact story and bold emphasis added (note that some subtle differences exist between my transcript and the one PolitiFact used):

HENSARLING:

Again, when I look at the statutory duty as opposed to the statutory goals of this committee, uh, our duty is to frankly offer recommendations and statutory language to address both the short term and long term imbalance.  With respect to the short term imbalance, um, is it not true that the, um, stimulus bill, um, with interest, amounts to over a trillion dollars of spending which accounts for a large temporary growth in our discretionary budget?

ELMENDORF:

Um, yes, although as you know, congressman, only a part of the Recovery Act was about discretionary spending; there were also increases in mandatory spending and reductions in taxes.  In total we put it a little over $800 billion and including interest I think you're right, about a trillion.  Um, and it did lead to a bulge in discretionary funding and then to uh, um, an attenuated bulge in outlays because not all the money gets spent right away.  

HENSARLING:

I don't know if you have at your fingertips numbers with respect to agency growth.  I had quoted a few and now that I look down apparently the source is your office so I hope I'm quoting your office correctly ...

ELMENDORF:

Um, I don't have those at hand, Mr. Congressman, but if they're from us you can certainly trust them.

HENSARLING:

I can trust them (laughs). Well then I trust that when you add in the stimulus the Commerce Department has grown 219 percent from '08 to '10, that with the stimulus EPA has grown 830.8 percent, the Energy Department has grown 170.7 percent with the stimulus, Education has grown 180.6 percent at a time when the economy has actually seen negative economic growth and family paychecks, um, have shrunk.  And unfortunately, again this is not the forum in which to debate the stimulus, but I think it has to be noted when we're talking about areas of the budget where savings could be had; at least the American people certainly deserve the facts.

(conversation shifts to discussion of CBO's alternative scenario and the increase in mandatory spending)

Hensarling identifies short term and long term responsibilities for the committee and uses the stimulus and its effect on agency growth to add concrete detail.  The subsequent discussion of the growth in mandatory spending fits with Hensarling's mention of a long term imbalance.

PolitiFact:

During an Oct. 26, 2011, hearing of the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- the "supercommittee" that’s charged with making steep cuts in the federal budget -- the co-chairman, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, offered budgetary statistics designed to show massive spending increases by federal agencies in recent years.

PolitiFact's summary misses Hensarling's broader point in focusing on agency growth, and PolitiFact's cropping of the exchange between Hensarling and Elmendorf cuts away most of the contextual clues that communicate that broader point.  The only remaining clue is the word "temporary" in the first sentence PolitiFact quotes from Hensarling.

We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.

--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Right.  Sure.

We can already see this fact check veering off track.

PolitiFact:

When this exchange got picked up in a Fox News Web article, a reader saw it and asked us whether Hensarling’s numbers were accurate. So we took a look.

This paragraph makes it appear that PolitiFact abdicated to a reader how to direct the focus of the fact check.  If the reader wants a focus just on the number and not on the underlying point--the latter supposedly the most important aspect of a numbers claim according to PolitiFact bigwig Bill Adair--then who is PolitiFact to object?

Before moving on, it is worth noting that Fox News did a poor job of presenting Hensarling's statement in context.  The Fox News version makes it appear that Hensarling was focused solely on agency growth and mostly dropped the context of the impact of the stimulus on the near-term budget.

PolitiFact:

As Hensarling stated at the hearing, he was adding together the 2010 authority and the stimulus amount to arrive at his percentage increase. And using that method, the numbers do work out. But is it a fair method to use? We have a few problems with it.

It's also worth noting that Democrat Alan Grayson's claim about wealth inequality faced no similar questions about whether the method was a fair way to measure privation or poor employment.  But what can you do if the reader doesn't ask to have the underlying point checked?

PolitiFact

Hensarling combines several years of stimulus spending into a single year, exaggerating the actual amount of budgetary growth between 2008 and 2010.

Lumping all of the budget authority from the stimulus into one year makes the final year of his two-year comparison higher, even if the stimulus money was actually spent over multiple years. This juices the percentage increases he cited at the hearing.

PolitiFact makes a fair point here, despite Hensarling saying that he was adding the stimulus numbers in to obtain the increase.  Even with Hensarling's description the method is misleading, though his underlying argument about the effect of the stimulus remains valid.


PolitiFact:

Hensarling leaves out that stimulus spending was always supposed to be temporary.

Hensarling is guilty of cherry-picking for another reason: The stimulus was designed to be temporary.

If Hensarling appears to leave out that stimulus spending was temporary, that is only because PolitiFact left out the parts of the context where Hensarling attached his comments about the stimulus to a short term increase in discretionary spending. 

The second criticism from PolitiFact has no merit.  Indeed, PolitiFact quoted Hensarling as saying "temporary growth" in referring to the stimulus bill.

PolitiFact:

The Commerce Department figures are skewed by a different temporary bump -- from the 2010 Census.

PolitiFact makes another fair point, though again it does not appear to significantly affect Hensarling's underlying message that the stimulus has temporarily added considerably to the budgets of some federal agencies.

PolitiFact prepares to issue its ruling:

We understand the arguments behind Hensarling’s methodological choices, but we still believe the path he chose cherry-picked the highest possible increase that the numbers would allow -- one several times higher than other ways to measure the same figure.

Would that PolitiFact had shared the rationale behind Hensarling's supposed methodological choices.  Readers may continue to wonder whether Hensarling chose the methodology or simply elected to use the statement from the House Budget Committee (to which Hensarling does not belong).  Again, it's hard not to detect an inconsistency between PolitiFact's treatment of Hensarling with its easy acceptance of wealth disparity estimates cited by Democrat Alan Grayson.

PolitiFact:

He lumped all stimulus spending into a single year, even though the spending was spread over several years. The year he chose to assign the stimulus spending to -- 2010 -- was not even the year the budget authority had been granted. And he obscured the fact that much of the enormous increases he cited stemmed from temporary factors, whether it’s the stimulus or spending on the decennial Census. We rule this claim False.

PolitiFact makes a fair point that Hensarling's numbers maximize the budget increases well into the realm of exaggeration.  PolitiFact is off base in claiming Hensarling obscured the temporary nature of the stimulus spending.  The point about the Commerce Department is fair but relatively minor.

With two out of three points on fairly solid ground, is the rating fair?

I'd say no.  Leaving aside the "True" rating Grayson received for what looked like a classic case of cherry picking, Hensarling has a legitimate message underlying the exaggerated numbers.  This case again fits a pattern that has underlying messages ignored if they help a conservative or ignored/reinterpreted if they harm a liberal.

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

Jacobson also wrote the Grayson item to which I have referred in this review, so his "F" is richly deserved.  Hamilton flunks for apparently not catching the fact that Hensarling was quite clear that the effects of the stimulus are temporary.

Afters:

I have concerns about PolitiFact's fact check stemming from the complexity of the written federal budget.  If Hensarling or the House Budget Committee had a justifiable rationale for crunching the numbers as it did, it's hard to see why PolitiFact shouldn't give Hensarling a Boxer Mulligan on this one.

Except that Boxer is a Democrat and Hensarling isn't.