Consistency of standards seems to be the real subject of a Grading PolitiFact review of a PolitiFact Texas ruling on former Texas state representative Paul Sadler, who stated that the federal debt (nearly) doubled when Bush was president.
The Sublime Bloviations Grading PolitiFact series gave both writer (Sue Owen) and editor (W. Gardner Selby) of this PolitiFact Texas ruling his usual “F” grade, yet agreed (was “okay with”) the Mostly True ruling. This was a case where the 500-pound Gorilla Christmas Tree was clearly comprehended, and that it was useless to nitpick about the ornaments.
Before reading this and finding that out, however, I was ready to make another Christmas connection of Sublime Bloviations’ Bryan White with the Republican Two Santa Claus theory as put forth by Jude Wanniski, and how very, very well George W. Bush played that game with his tax cuts. If you look at the chart below, Bush initiated two wars and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit , yet as a percentage of GDP his spending appears relatively flat until the financial meltdown of 2008.
Instead, White belittled the “way” in which the ruling was written, and inserted his own five “concrete examples” of what was wrong with it.
So, let’s take a look at each of his examples, and see if PolitiFact follows any sort of “standards” and if it deviates from them depending on who it is they’re rating.
1) Evidently none of the figures recognize the temporary nature of the debt resulting from the bailout spending in 2009. That bailout spending accounted for very roughly $441 billion as of June 30, 2009.
Right off the bat, there’s been suggestions that bailout repayments may have been recorded differently, while other PolitiFact rulings appear to indicate otherwise. Assuming it to be $600 billion, that’s a little over 10% of Bush’s deficits. Along with the questionable accounting, we’re still at three fourths of that “nearly double.” But the real question is: does PolitiFact take the bailout pay-backs into account in other fact-checks, or do other fact-checkers figure in the bailouts? A lengthy review by FactCheck.Org indicates it does not take the bank bailouts into account (and in this 2010 review as well). PolitiFact rulings about (statements concerning) Bush’s debt by Obama supporters Rahm Emmanuel and Dick Durbin do not take this into account. A briefly-lived fact-checker sponsored by NBC News called “Meet The Facts” awarded New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez a “Mostly True” on a "national debt increasing 72% " statement and does not take the bailout paybacks into account. Onto Number 2 example:
2) Bush gets about $120 billion in ARRA (stimulus) spending credited to his FY2009 account. ARRA spending and bailouts combined may account for nearly $600 billion in supposed debt. The story omits all of this context.
This is basically a repeat of the first point. Factcheck.Org takes into account the stimulus spending and the auto bailout, but does not address the paybacks. Onto Number 3 Example:
3) Following the above, the inauguration date figures probably provide a better estimate of the debt increase than those from the end of the 2001 and 2009 fiscal years: That estimate comes to a 54 percent increase on the gross debt after adjusting for inflation.
Here, PolitiFact (and other fact-checkers) most often use the inauguration date to measure the increase, but they do not account for inflation. In the Rahm Emmanuel fact-check mentioned above:
When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion. That's a difference of $4.97 trillion, almost $1 trillion more than what Emanuel said.
In the Dick Durbin fact-check, the end of year 2000 to the end of year 2008 was used, which is almost as good:
