By James D. Agresti
May 9, 2012

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, economics reporter Justin Lahart declares that “sharp cuts in state and local government spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the layoffs those cuts wrought” may be a reason behind the “persistently high” unemployment rate.

This cannot possibly be the case because there were no sharp cuts in spending. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which provides the “only comprehensive estimates of state and local government [fiscal] activity available on a timely basis,” state and local government spending grew by 6.6% from 2008 through 2011. During this same period, the consumer price index for all items grew by 4.4%, which means that state and local government spending expanded faster than the rate of inflation.

Likewise, if government spending is measured as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product, state and local government spending increased by 0.9% over this period, although it peaked in 2009 and decreased by 2.3% between 2009 and 2011. It is impossible to determine from the article if Lahart is using such a measure because he provides no data to support this claim. Regardless, a 2.3% decline in this context hardly qualifies as “sharp,” especially since by the same measure, spending rose by 7.0% in the two years prior to this.

Similar to Lahart, Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent of the New York Times, reported last week:

For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of the American economy has shrunk during the first three years of a presidential administration. Spending by the federal government, adjusted for inflation, has risen at a slow rate under President Obama. But that increase has been more than offset by a fall in spending by state and local governments, which have been squeezed by weak tax receipts.

Norris uses BEA data to support these assertions, but he fails to tell his readers that his definition of government spending excludes a host of major government programs, such as unemployment benefits, food stamps, and Social Security (credit belongs to Morgen Richmond and Dustin Siggins at Hot Air for bringing this to attention).

More specifically, Norris equates government spending with “real gross domestic product for the government.” However, as the BEA has explained, “Total spending by government is much larger than the spending included in GDP” because “transfer payments and interest payments are excluded” from this measure. Transfer payments, by the way, include items such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, foreign aid, and United Nations support (“A Primer on BEA’s Government Accounts,” page 34).

Going back to at least 2010, commentators such as Paul Krugman of the New York Times have been making misleading statements about government spending. Others are doing the same by using unsupported assertions, redefining government spending to exclude large portions of it, and cherry-picking misrepresentative baselines from which to make calculations.

Hence, to accurately convey the realities of this issue, Just Facts is providing raw data and graphs for federal, state, and local government spending from 1990 through 2011. These graphs (below) express spending as a percentage of GDP because debates about the size of government are often centered upon how much of a nation’s economy is consumed by government and because this measure accounts for population changes and some of the effects of inflation/deflation. However, for reasons detailed in a Just Facts Radio episode entitled “Fathoming the National Debt,” readers should be aware that this measure inherently favors advocates of higher government spending.

By James D. Agresti
April 17, 2012

Today, the Los Angeles Times published a house editorial claiming it is “baseless hype” that Obama wants to restrict gun rights. In particular, the editors criticize statements by the NRA and Mitt Romney that Obama is anti-gun and plans to undermine the Second Amendment through his Supreme Court appointments. To refute these allegations, the editors write that Obama:

• “has rarely mentioned the topic.”
• “hasn’t proposed any anti-gun legislation in his first term.”
• “supported” the Supreme Court’s ruling in D.C. v Heller, which upheld an individual right to bear arms.

All of these statements have an element of truth but are misleading by virtue of what is left unsaid. Though the president has rarely mentioned gun control in public, the Washington Post has reported the following about a meeting between leading gun control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady and Obama’s press secretary:

During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.

“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

In keeping with an under-the-radar approach, Obama voiced support for the Supreme Court’s ruling in D.C. v Heller (which was decided by a tight 5-4 margin) while he:

• appointed a Supreme Court Justice (Sonia Sotomayor) who joined in an opinion declaring that “the use of arms for private self-defense does not warrant federal constitutional protection from state regulation,” and the Framers of the Constitution “did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense.”
• appointed another Supreme Court Justice (Elena Kagan) who recommend denying an appeal hearing for someone convicted of violating Washington, D.C.’s gun laws because, in her words, the man’s “sole contention is that the District of Columbia’s firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to ‘keep and bear arms.’ I’m not sympathetic.”

Furthermore, as a U.S. senator, Obama voted against the nomination of two justices who ruled in favor of an individual right to bear arms in D.C v Heller, and he also identified two other justices who ruled this way as people he would not have nominated to the Supreme Court. Obama didn’t say that gun control was as a reason he opposed any of these nominations, but nonetheless, if the president had his way, 4 of the 5 justices who ruled in favor of Heller would not have been on the Supreme Court.

Congruently, during the 2008 presidential race, Politico uncovered two candidate position questionnaires from Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois state Senate. In both questionnaires, the question was posed, “Do you support state legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?” In both cases, the answer was “Yes.”

When these questionnaires became public, Obama’s campaign asserted that a staffer filled them out and some of the replies did not and do not reflect Obama’s views. However, an investigation by Politico found that one of the questionnaires contains written notes that appear to be in Obama’s hand, and the other questionnaire has a cover sheet indicating that Obama supplied the answers in a face-to-face interview at the house of a board member of the organization that issued the questionnaire. The board member has confirmed that Obama personally sat for this interview.

Additionally, two years later on July 2, 1998, Obama or one of his aides submitted a candidate position questionnaire advocating a “ban” on the “sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.”

Obama has publicly expressed support for gun rights since he began running for president, stating in 2008 that “I won’t take your handgun away” and “I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms.” Nevertheless, Obama’s Supreme Court appointments, Senate votes, and reported statements to Jim and Sarah Brady are consistent with his previously declared agenda to restrict gun rights.

By James D. Agresti
April 12, 2012

Speaking last week from the White House Rose Garden, President Obama made the following remarks about the pending Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.

In this statement, Obama describes judicial activism as a court striking down a law. This may be Obama’s view of judicial activism, but it is not the typical view of “conservative commentators” to whom he ascribes it. The phrase “judicial activism,” as explained in a California Law Review paper, has “many distinct and even contradictory meanings.” Obama’s description accords with one of these meanings, but this is not the form of judicial activism generally criticized by conservatives.

Conservatives have repeatedly described judicial activism as judges elevating their personal views over the Constitution or the law. At its core, this is the mindset verbalized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a liberal icon who mentored Obama’s newest Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagen. When Marshall was asked to describe his judicial philosophy, he responded, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”

In contrast, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas articulated a directly opposing view of judicial philosophy in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent conservative think tank:

If we are to be a nation of laws and not of men, judges must be impartial referees who defend constitutional principles from attempts by particular interests—or even the people as a whole—to overwhelm them.

This echoes the sentiments of James Madison, the primary author of the Bill of Rights, and the person known as the “Father of the Constitution” for his central role in its formation. Near the outset of the Constitutional Convention, Madison vowed that it was the duty of the convention to frame a system of government that would protect “the rights of the minority” from the “common interest or passion” of the majority. This principle is what distinguishes the United States from a pure democracy in which anything goes if the majority wants it.

Liberals also stake claim to this tenet but assert that judges should flexibly interpret the Constitution in the light of evolving circumstances. In the words of liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer:

I tend to emphasize purpose and consequences. Others emphasize language, a more literal reading of the text, history and tradition—believing that those help you reach a more objective answer.

Contrastingly, conservatives support the view that the Constitution should be interpreted in the light of its original intent, and changes to this intent should be made only by amendment. In the words of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.

Given such highly divergent judicial philosophies, it is only natural that liberals and conservatives would have different views of what constitutes judicial activism. However, irrespective of how one defines the term, it is misleading to ascribe any one of these views to others who don’t hold it, which is precisely what the president did.

By James D. Agresti
March 29, 2012

After a live microphone captured President Obama asking Russian President Medvedev to transmit a message to Vladimir Putin that it is “important for him to give me space” on missile defense until after the upcoming election, “Obama avowed that he is not hiding his intentions from the American people:

The only way I get this stuff done is if I’m consulting with the Pentagon, with Congress, if I’ve got bipartisan support. And frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations. This is not a matter of hiding the ball.

Contrary to this assertion, the president has authority as the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military to make unilateral decisions about many aspects of missile defense. Obama did this in 2009 when he decided to cancel U.S. plans to deploy missile interceptors in Poland, a decision that Putin praised as “very right and brave.”

Casting further doubt on Obama’s explanation, his remark to Medvedev—”This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility”—conveys that he will not be as concerned with the political consequences of any actions he will take after the election.

Many media outlets are reporting on this incident without offering significant context about the involved parties and their records on missile defense. Thus, Just Facts is providing a chronological list of facts regarding these matters:

* In 2001, Obama told a Chicago television station, “I, for example, don’t agree with a missile defense system.” (Video)

* In 2007, Obama made a videotaped statement for an organization opposed to missile defense, declaring that, “As president,” “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.” (Video)

* On November 8, 2008 (4 days after Obama’s election), Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser, Denis McDonough, stated that the president-elect “supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proved to be workable.”

* Four days later on November 12, 2008, the head of the U.S. missile defense agency, Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, stated that the U.S. missile defense system is “workable,” and, “Our testing has shown not only can we hit a bullet with a bullet, we can hit a spot on the bullet with a bullet.”

* On April 06, 2009 (two and half months after Obama took office), the Department of Defense announced that it was cutting the Missile Defense Agency program by $1.4 billion, cancelling the planned deployment of additional ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska, and halting two other missile defense efforts: the Airborne Laser Prototype Aircraft and the Multiple Kill Vehicle program.

* On April 8, 2010, Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev signed the START II treaty, which states that there is an “interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms,” and “current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness” of the U.S. or Russia’s “strategic offensive arms.”

* On the day that Obama and Medvedev signed the START II treaty, the Russian government issued an official statement stressing that the treaty “can operate and be viable only if the United States of America refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.”

* On May 6, 2010, six U.S. Senators sent a letter to Obama requesting that he turn over the negotiating records for START II treaty. The Obama administration refused to turn over the records, despite the fact that the Nixon and Reagan administrations had turned over arms control treaty negotiating records when asked by Democratic Senators.

* On December 18, 2010,

• Obama sent a letter to the US Senate asserting, “The New START Treaty places no limitations on the development or deployment of our missile defense programs.”
• Senate Democrats defeated a Republican proposal to remove the language from the treaty that specifies an “interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms….”
• the U.S. Senate approved the START II treaty, with 100% of Democrats voting for it, and 67% of Republicans voting against it.

* In February 2011, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov stated, “If the U.S. increases the qualitative and quantitative potential of its missile defense, Russia may respond with “military-technical measures.”

* On May 18, 2011, Medvedev threatened to develop “our nuclear strike potential” if he cannot “work out a model for cooperation in anti-missile defense” with “my colleague and friend President Obama.”

* On March 26, 2012, shortly after Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia under a cloud of electoral fraud, Obama had the following conversation with outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev while unaware that a microphone was recording them:

Obama: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space.”

Medvedev: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you.”

Obama: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

By James D. Agresti
March 22, 2012

The Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have recently produced a television ad that depicts children suffering from asthma while attributing their plight to “air pollutants like carbon, mercury, and soot.” Politico has reported that these groups are running the ad in swing states and spending seven figures to do so.

Similarly, the American Lung Association is touting a new poll regarding the Obama administration’s soon-to-be released “clean air standards for carbon pollution emitted by power plants.” The poll shows that 72% of voters support these standards.

The advertisement and poll concern noxious air pollutants. Yet, these organizations (and many like them) use the very same terminology to refer to carbon dioxide (CO2), which academic texts clearly describe as a “relatively nonreactive and nontoxic” gas that is “vital to life” and “does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans.”

Activists often lump CO2 with highly toxic pollutants (like carbon monoxide and black carbon) by using the catch-all phrase, “carbon pollution.” Media heavyweights, including the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, Reuters, and ABC News have also referred to CO2 using such verbiage.

The word “pollution” conjures up images of smokestacks emitting plumes of soot, a black-colored carbon-based substance that can cause cancer. In contrast, carbon dioxide is generally colorless, odorless, and again, nontoxic; hardly the type of substance that springs to mind when hearing the word “pollution.”

Furthermore, natural emissions of CO2 outweigh man-made emissions by a factor of twenty to one, and CO2 is a welcome output of automotive catalytic converters, which the EPA describes as an “anti-pollution device” that converts “exhaust pollutants … to normal atmospheric gases such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water.”

Regardless of these facts, from an advocacy standpoint, it is more effective to lobby against “carbon pollution” rather than “carbon dioxide.” Also, by interchangeably using the term “carbon pollution” for generally nontoxic and also highly toxic substances, references to these substances are inevitably conflated by the average voter.

A member of the Society of Environmental Journalists has argued that it is appropriate to refer to carbon dioxide as a pollutant because the Supreme Court ruled (by a 5-4 margin in 2007) that the EPA could regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act’s expansive definition of pollution. This, however, is not a license to use these words in ways that create misleading impressions.

There are more than ten million different carbon compounds, and grouping highly dissimilar carbon compounds under the term “carbon pollution” is as misleading as grouping a highly explosive gas like hydrogen (H2) with water (H2O) under the term “hydrogen pollution.” For those who might object that water could never be considered a pollutant under any reasonable interpretation of the term, it is worth noting that water vapor contributes multiplicatively more to the earth’s greenhouse effect than CO2.

By James D. Agresti
March 15, 2012

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to “apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship” to “reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.”

FactCheck.org recently published an article entitled “Santorum’s science,” by Lori Robertson. In this piece, Robertson criticizes Rick Santorum for a statement he made about global warming on March 12th in Biloxi, Mississippi. Alluding to the fact that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a vital ingredient for plant life, Santorum quipped, “The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is.”

Robertson attempts to refute Santorum’s remark by declaring:

• “Too much” CO2 “is definitely a bad thing.”
• “Exposure to high levels of CO2 can cause ‘headaches, dizziness, restlessness … coma, asphyxia to convulsions … and even frostbite if exposed to dry ice,’ which is solid CO2.”
• “Plants do, in fact, absorb CO2. But even plants might not like too much of it. A 2008 study conducted at the University of Illinois found that instead of increasing organic matter in soil, higher carbon dioxide levels actually led to less organic matter.”

These statements are materially misleading. Let’s examine them one at a time.

FactCheck.org: “Too much” CO2 “is definitely a bad thing.”

The same can be said of just about every substance known to man. The most basic principle of toxicology is that “the dose makes the poison.” As explained in a Cambridge University Press textbook, Understanding Environmental Pollution (page 60), “Anything is toxic at a high enough dose. … Even water, drunk in very large quantities, may kill people by disrupting the osmotic balance in the body’s cells.”

Likewise, even oxygen can be toxic when breathed in high concentrations. Per The Johns Hopkins Manual of Gynecology and Obstetrics (page 40), “when there is too much oxygen … the lungs may be damaged, as in acute repository distress syndrome (ARDS).”

Thus, it is meaningless to proclaim that “too much” of any particular substance is “a bad thing.” Instead, the pertinent matter is, “When does it become a bad thing?” which leads directly to the next point.

FactCheck.org: “Exposure to high levels of CO2 can cause ‘headaches, dizziness, restlessness … coma, asphyxia to convulsions … and even frostbite if exposed to dry ice,’ which is solid CO2.”

This statement is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Santorum was speaking about global warming and atmospheric CO2—not ventilation deathtraps, industrial hazards, and dry ice. The truth is that atmospheric CO2 levels don’t approach anywhere near the doses that can cause the symptoms that Robertson lists.

Using data from multiple academic sources, Just Facts has documented that carbon dioxide produces no adverse physiological effects on humans until concentrations exceed 50 times the level in Earth’s atmosphere. Furthermore, natural emissions of CO2 outweigh man-made emissions by a factor of twenty to one.

Some of Robertson’s confusion may stem from the source that she cites for the dangers of CO2, which is a cut sheet from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services. This document contains a major recurring error. The figures given for CO2 concentrations that cause various adverse effects are mistaken by more than a factor of ten.

For example, the cut sheet says that exposure to CO2 concentrations above 5,000 parts per million (ppm) “may lead to serious oxygen deprivation resulting in permanent brain damage, coma and even death.” As detailed by the National Research Council (and many other academic sources), humans can be routinely exposed to more than ten times this level of CO2 for days on end without any indications of permanent brain damage or threat of death. In fact, it takes prolonged CO2 exposures of more than 20,000 ppm just to cause occasional, mild headaches.

FactCheck.org: “Plants do, in fact, absorb CO2. But even plants might not like too much of it. A 2008 study conducted at the University of Illinois found that instead of increasing organic matter in soil, higher carbon dioxide levels actually led to less organic matter.”

First, according to the article that Robertson cites for this claim, this study found that higher CO2 levels “may” have led to less organic matter in the soil of a certain soybean crop. This is different from claiming that higher CO2 “actually” led to less organic matter in plant soil.

Far more significantly, Robertson fails to mention that the study found “a 30 percent increase in above- and below- ground soybean biomass” among the crops exposed to more CO2. In plain language, these soybean plants grew 30% larger. They did, in fact, “like” the added CO2.

Note that this study was conducted at a CO2 level of 550 ppm, as compared to the current atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 387 ppm. Bear those figures in mind, because the study’s result accords with an academic text that explains how to increase the productivity of commercial greenhouses:

Plants need water, light, warmth, nutrition and CO2 to grow. By increasing the CO2 level in the greenhouse atmosphere (typical to 600 ppm instead of normal 400 ppm value), the growth for some plants can be stimulated in an important way, with often yield increases up to 20%, especially for tomato, cucumber, strawberry, etc. but also for potted plants and cut flowers.

In sum, Santorum is correct. CO2 concentrations well above today’s atmospheric levels are typically beneficial to plants.

By James D. Agresti
March 5, 2012

The Washington Post has published an op-ed entitled “Five myths about Medicare” by John Rother, the president of an organization that works to “achieve comprehensive health system reform.” This commentary contains at least nine misleading assertions. Here are the first five:

1. “Providers’ costs for treating Medicare patients are generally covered, and in many sectors, such as in-home nursing and hospice, providers make almost 20 percent profit from treating Medicare patients.”

The source Rother cites (a Washington Post article) does not state what he says it does. Instead, it states that hospice “profit margins on healthier patients who survive for years with minimal care can exceed 20 percent, according to Medpac.” In other words, these high profit margins apply only to a select group of hospice patients. Per a 2011 MedPAC report (page 275), hospice providers make an average of 5.1% profit from treating Medicare patients, not “almost 20 percent” as Rother affirms.

More importantly, contrary to the claim that providers’ costs for treating Medicare patients are generally covered, Medicare pays hospitals an average of 10% below their costs of caring for Medicare patients. These losses are shifted onto private sector patients, thereby increasing their hospital bills.

Although Rother focuses on hospice, what Medicare spends on hospice is less than 8% of what Medicare spends on hospital care. Per the above-cited MedPAC report, Medicare spent $12 billion on hospice in 2010. In comparison, Medicare spent $168 billion on hospital care that year (2011 Medicare Trustees Report, page 9).

2. It is a “myth” that Medicare “fails to control costs,” because its spending growth has been no greater than that of private health insurance.

In addition to the fact that Medicare shifts some of its costs onto the private sector, Rother’s claim is based upon the implicit premise that private health insurance is effective at controlling costs. In reality, inflation-adjusted healthcare spending per person has multiplied by 7.6 times between 1960 and 2009. In absolute terms, per capita healthcare spending swelled by 55 times during this period.

This dramatic increase in healthcare spending took place along with a pronounced rise in third-party payments, which occur when consumers don’t directly pay for their healthcare. Instead, these expenses are paid by other entities such as government and insurance companies. Between 1960 and 2009, the portion of U.S. healthcare expenses paid directly by consumers decreased from 48% to 12%, while the portion paid by government increased from 24% to 48%, and the portion paid by private insurance increased from 21% to 32%.

As explained in the Encyclopedia of Health Care Management (page 391), when individuals don’t directly pay for their healthcare, they have “little interest in price.” This partly explains why both Medicare and private insurance fail to control costs.

3. It is a “myth” that Medicare is “inefficient.”

In the federal government’s 2010 fiscal year, Medicare made about $48 billion in improper payments, amounting to 9.3% of all Medicare outlays. This rate is more than double the annual median net profit margin for the ten largest health insurance companies from 2007 through 2010, which ranged from 2.1% to 4.4%.

Furthermore, Medicare’s improper payment figures fail to account for its prescription drug program, which had outlays of $59 billion in 2010.

4. “The Congressional Budget Office recently predicted that per capita Medicare spending will grow 1 percent faster than the rate of inflation over the next decade.”

The prediction appears on page 56 of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that Rother cites, but the same page explains that the projection is based upon the implausible assumption that Medicare will cut physicians’ fees “by 27 percent in March 2012 and by additional amounts in subsequent years.”

This 27% cut stems from a 1997 provision of federal law intended to constrain Medicare costs, but it has been overridden every year since 2003 and was overridden for 2012 shortly before Rother’s op-ed was published. This was no surprise. As the 2011 Medicare Trustees Report explained on page 2, it is a “virtual certainty that Congress will override this reduction.”

The same page of this CBO report also explains that this projection excludes the costs of Medicare’s prescription drug program, which “will double” over the next decade “largely because of a combination of rising drug costs and the more generous benefits enacted in the Affordable Care Act [a.k.a. Obamacare].”

5. “Trimming Medicare costs by limiting increases in payments to providers and plans” has “rarely been found to affect quality or access to care.”

This assertion is proven false by consequence of the 1997 law mentioned above. As explained in a 2011 Medicare actuarial study, Congress enacted this law “to limit growth in spending on physician services to a sustainable rate, roughly in line with the rate of overall economic growth.” This effort lasted for five years, and in 2002, the New York Times reported: “For the first time, significant numbers of doctors are refusing to take new Medicare patients, saying the government now pays them too little to cover the costs of caring for the elderly.”

To repeat, for every year since 2003, various congresses and presidents have legislatively overridden this so-called “sustainable growth rate” to ensure that Medicare patients have access to care. However, instead of removing this provision entirely, they overrode it one year at a time. Hence, each year, the distance between reality and what the law specifies became wider. This explains why Medicare was due to cut payments for physicians services by a whopping 27% this year.

Since these cost limits are always supposed to become effective “next year,” this method of changing the law one year at a time has the effect of skewing Medicare’s financial projections, making it seem as though future costs will be far lower than they actually will be.

This Washington Post/Rother op-ed, which was published with the subtitle, “Challenging everything you think you know,” contains four more fallacies that will be examined in an upcoming article.

By James D. Agresti
February 25, 2012

In a fact check of Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate on CNN, Associated Press reporters Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum take Newt Gingrich to task for stating:

If we’re going to have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama, who as a state senator voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.

Citing the above statement in a list of what they call “head-scratching claims,” Woodward and Raum challenge it as follows:

THE FACTS: As an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against legislation promoted by anti-abortion activists that would have conferred protection to fetuses showing any signs of life after an abortion, even if doctors did not believe the fetus was viable. Obama pointed to an existing Illinois law requiring doctors to protect fetuses they believed were likely to survive after an abortion, and said he was concerned the proposed new law was so broad it could interfere with routine abortions. Obama said he would have supported federal legislation President George W. Bush signed in 2002 that would protect a viable fetus but reaffirmed a woman’s right to an abortion.

These assertions obscure the truth in several respects, which are covered in Just Facts’ research on abortion in the sections dealing with live births and terminology.

First, Woodward and Raum uncritically relay Obama’s assertion that the proposed law was so broad it could interfere with routine abortions, but the law specifically applied only to those who were “born alive.”

Second, although Obama has alleged that he would have voted for the bill that Bush signed in 2002, Obama’s claim is at odds with the fact that he later voted to kill legislation with the same operative language. This vote took place on March 12, 2003 in an Illinois Senate committee that Obama was chairing. The bill was practically a word-for-word replica of the federal bill that Bush had signed, except that it applied on a state level.

Third, the legislation that Bush signed in 2002 is not limited to protecting “a viable fetus” as the AP asserts. Instead, it protects anyone “born alive” who “breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles….” The law makes no distinction based upon viability.

Fourth, Woodward and Raum convey Obama’s claim that existing Illinois law already required “doctors to protect fetuses they believed were likely to survive after an abortion,” but they fail to mention what this law did not protect. The law did not require doctors who perform abortions to care for those who survived. Instead, the law required that a second doctor be present at the abortion to provide such care if the abortionist determined beforehand that the fetus was “viable.” Thus, the law provided little protection for those who were not deemed “viable” in the “judgment” of the abortionist. Consequently, aborted infants in Illinois sometimes lived for hours after birth while being abandoned to die without any care or comfort provided to them.

Finally, Woodward and Raum label live-born humans as “fetuses,” when in fact, the term “fetus” refers to “humans from nine weeks after fertilization until birth.” All of the legislation in question was applicable to humans who are “born alive” after “complete expulsion or extraction” from their mothers. Hence, these are not fetuses but newborns. Notice in the following statement about this issue how the Royal College of Obstetricians uses the word “fetus” before birth and the word “baby” afterwards:

If the fetus has had a lethal injection, it will normally die. However, there are some instances when there are signs of life at birth. All babies must be treated with dignity and respect. Palliative care should be provided till the baby dies where relevant.

Although journalism guidelines disparage the use of medical jargon in articles for the general public, journalists selectively employ and misuse such verbiage in their coverage of the abortion issue. It is not just the Associated Press that has misapplied the word “fetus” but also the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fox News, and CNN.

Regardless of the AP’s errors, Newt’s claim that Obama “voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion” is debatable. The preexisting law made it a felony to perform an abortion on a “viable” fetus while “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” failing “to arrange for the attendance of” a second physician to provide “immediate medical care to a child” who is born alive. On the other hand, the determination of viability was subjective, and the law did not prohibit doctors from leaving nonviable newborns to suffer and die without care.

In sum, Obama voted against three bills stating that anyone “born alive at any stage of development” is considered a “person” under Illinois state law including those born as a result of “abortion.” He did this in the face of sworn testimony from Illinois nurses who witnessed aborted newborns living and being neglected for up to eight hours after birth. These are the straightforward and unadorned facts of the matter.

By James D. Agresti
February 24, 2012

CORRECTION: Just Facts has rewritten and retitled this article based upon a more thorough examination of the laws entailed. This revealed that Newt’s characterization of Obama’s votes is better described as “debatable” rather than “inaccurate.” Just Facts also found two more distortions in the AP’s coverage of this issue. The original article is shown below. The corrected article is here.

In a fact check of Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate on CNN, Associated Press reporters Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum take Newt Gingrich to task for stating:

If we’re going to have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama, who as a state senator voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.

Citing the above statement in a list of what they call “head-scratching claims,” Woodward and Raum challenge it as follows:

THE FACTS: As an Illinois state senator, Obama voted against legislation promoted by anti-abortion activists that would have conferred protection to fetuses showing any signs of life after an abortion, even if doctors did not believe the fetus was viable. Obama pointed to an existing Illinois law requiring doctors to protect fetuses they believed were likely to survive after an abortion, and said he was concerned the proposed new law was so broad it could interfere with routine abortions. Obama said he would have supported federal legislation President George W. Bush signed in 2002 that would protect a viable fetus but reaffirmed a woman’s right to an abortion.

These assertions miss the truth in three key respects, which are covered in Just Facts’ research on abortion in the sections dealing with live births and terminology.

First, although Obama has said that he would have voted for the bill that Bush signed in 2002, Obama’s claim is at odds with the fact that he later voted to kill legislation with the same operative language. This vote took place on March 12, 2003 in an Illinois Senate committee that Obama was chairing. The bill was practically a word-for-word replica of the federal bill that Bush had signed, except that it applied on a state level.

Second, Woodward and Raum parrot Obama’s stance that existing Illinois law already offered protection for infants who were born alive after an abortion. However, the law did not require care for such infants if there wasn’t a “reasonable likelihood of sustained survival” in the judgment of the abortion provider. Consequently, aborted infants in Illinois sometimes lived for hours after birth while being abandoned to die without any care or comfort provided to them.

Finally, Woodward and Raum label live-born humans as “fetuses,” when in fact, the term “fetus” refers to “humans from nine weeks after fertilization until birth.” All of the legislation in question was applicable to humans who are “born alive” after “complete expulsion or extraction” from their mothers. Hence, these are not fetuses but newborns. Notice in the following statement about this issue how the Royal College of Obstetricians uses the word “fetus” before birth and the word “baby” afterwards:

If the fetus has had a lethal injection, it will normally die. However, there are some instances when there are signs of life at birth. All babies must be treated with dignity and respect. Palliative care should be provided till the baby dies where relevant.

Although journalism guidelines disparage the use of medical jargon in articles for the general public, journalists selectively employ and misuse such verbiage in their coverage of the abortion issue. It is not just the Associated Press that has misapplied the word “fetus” but also the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Fox News, and CNN.

Regardless of the AP’s errors, Newt’s statement is inaccurate. Obama did not vote to “protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.” The preexisting law did not allow doctors to kill babies after they were born, but neither did it prohibit doctors from leaving nonviable newborns to suffer and die without care.

In sum, Obama voted against three bills stating that anyone “born alive at any stage of development” is considered a “person” under Illinois state law including those born as a result of “abortion.” He did this in the face of sworn testimony from Illinois nurses who witnessed aborted newborns living and being neglected for up to eight hours after birth. These are the straightforward and unadorned facts of the matter.

By James D. Agresti
February 16, 2012

While arguing that safety-net programs should be strengthened because they don’t do an adequate job of protecting the poor, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman asserts in the New York Times that

one in six Americans living below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger.

First, Krugman confuses the definition of “very low food security” with “low food security.” “Low food security” doesn’t equate to hunger, and in fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) previously labeled this same category of household as “food insecure without hunger.” (USDA report, page 4)

Nonetheless, Krugman correctly matches the definition he quotes with the proper statistic: one in six low-income households (17.0% to be exact) reduced their food intake because they “had insufficient money or other resources for food.” However, he misidentifies the populace to which this figure applies and inaccurately summarizes the definition. The statistic of “one in six” doesn’t apply to “Americans living below the poverty line” but to U.S. households (including those populated by illegal immigrants) with incomes below 130% of the poverty line. (USDA report, page 16)

Furthermore, this statistic doesn’t apply to the low-income population as a whole but to low-income households in which “the food intake of one or more household members” was reduced. Because the food intake of one household member doesn’t necessarily translate to other members of the household, Krugman’s misapplication of this data makes the situation seem more common than it actually is. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture explains,

not all individuals in households classified as having very low food security were subject to the reductions in food intake and disruptions in eating patterns that characterize this condition. Young children, in particular, are often protected from effects of the household’s food insecurity. (USDA report, page 6).

Also, contrary to Krugman’s one-word synopsis (“hunger”), households with very low food security don’t necessarily experience hunger. In about a third of such households, survey respondents reported that they had not been hungry during any point of the year.  (USDA report, page 49)

So how many people actually go hungry in the U.S.? A 2009 survey of 46,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Department of Agriculture found that 3.00% of respondents experienced hunger in the previous 30 days because they couldn’t afford food. The survey didn’t include “homeless persons who are not in shelters,” and thus, it “may result in an underestimate of the number of persons with very low food security.” (USDA report, pages iv, 50, and 55)

The survey did, however, include illegal immigrants, who experience hunger at a much higher rate than the general population. A study conducted for a 2007 paper in the journal Public Health Nutrition found that 28% of 431 undocumented Mexican immigrants living in New York City have “experienced periods in the last six months when they were hungry but were unable to eat because they could not afford enough food.”

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. vary widely, but based upon “2008 data collected by the Census Bureau, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the nation’s population….” Thus, very roughly speaking, about one percentage point of the hungry in the U.S. are here illegally (4% × 28% = 1.1%).

And what of the other two percentage points of people in this country who experience hunger? U.S. citizens living in households with incomes below 130% of the poverty line are generally eligible for food stamps, and even non-citizens who are here legally are also eligible under various circumstances.

So why are these 2% still hungry? Just Facts is unaware of any data that can conclusively answer this question, but the fact that hunger is significantly associated with mental illness may provide some insight. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration recently published data showing that 5.0% of the non-institutionalized U.S. adult population have a “severe mental illness” that “substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.”