Numbers are the rope in stimulus tug-of-war

As the fight over the stimulus goes on, we looked into two commonly cited arguments.

President Obama said that Republicans are nitpicking: “If you add all that stuff up, it accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall package.” We took apart the numbers and found that some criticisms are over matters that do represent less than 1 percent. But other criticisms are more substantive. We found Obama’s statement

Half True

.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the Congressional Budget Office showed that not much of the stimulus package would be spent in 2009 and 2010. But we found he looked at old data when a new analysis was available. He also used numbers that ignored the effect of tax cuts. We found his statement

Barely True

.