Six numbers to ignore from the presidential campaign
The presidential race has been replete with statistics and data tossed out by the candidates that purport to show something threatening or wrongheaded about their opponent's policies. Typically, they don't just make up their numbers; instead, they take research produced by someone else (often an ideologically friendly source), then apply their own spin. And in many cases, that spin takes the statistic so far out of context, it becomes misleading at best. Here are six examples of numbers frequently cited by the Obama and Romney campaigns that voters should either ignore or take with a very large grain of salt. --Jon Healey
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![President Obama often asserts that his GOP rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion. As Obama put it at the second presidential debate on Tuesday, "Along with what he also wants to do in terms of eliminating the estate tax, along what he wants to do in terms of corporate [tax cuts], changes in the tax code, it costs about $5 trillion." The Obama campaign arrived at that figure by extrapolating from an <a href="http://taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm">estimate</a> by the Tax Policy Center (a project run by the centrist Brookings Institute and the liberal Urban Institute) of the revenue sacrificed in one year by Romney's proposed reduction in tax rates. But that's misleading because it ignores the other half of Romney's proposal for the tax code, which is to roll back deductions, credits and exemptions. Granted, Romney hasn't specified which of those breaks he would eliminate, or the total value thereof. He's simply said that, after factoring economic growth, the changes in tax law would neither increase nor reduce the federal deficit. Talking about the cost of the tax plan by looking only at the rate cuts and not the offsetting reduction in tax breaks is like saying a rainbow is red, yellow and orange.](http://www.trbimg.com/img/turbine/la-ol-president-obama-5-trillion-20121019/620 "President Obama often asserts that his GOP rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion. As Obama put it at the second presidential debate on Tuesday, \"Along with what he also wants to do in terms of eliminating the estate tax, along what he wants to do in terms of corporate [tax cuts], changes in the tax code, it costs about $5 trillion.\" The Obama campaign arrived at that figure by extrapolating from an <a href=\"http://taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm\">estimate</a> by the Tax Policy Center (a project run by the centrist Brookings Institute and the liberal Urban Institute) of the revenue sacrificed in one year by Romney's proposed reduction in tax rates. But that's misleading because it ignores the other half of Romney's proposal for the tax code, which is to roll back deductions, credits and exemptions. Granted, Romney hasn't specified which of those breaks he would eliminate, or the total value thereof. He's simply said that, after factoring economic growth, the changes in tax law would neither increase nor reduce the federal deficit. Talking about the cost of the tax plan by looking only at the rate cuts and not the offsetting reduction in tax breaks is like saying a rainbow is red, yellow and orange.")
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$5 trillion( Scott Eells / Bloomberg )
President Obama often asserts that his GOP rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion. As Obama put it at the second presidential debate on Tuesday, "Along with what he also wants to do in terms of eliminating the estate tax, along what he wants to do in terms of corporate [tax cuts], changes in the tax code, it costs about $5 trillion." The Obama campaign arrived at that figure by extrapolating from an estimate by the Tax Policy Center (a project run by the centrist Brookings Institute and the liberal Urban Institute) of the revenue sacrificed in one year by Romney's proposed reduction in tax rates. But that's misleading because it ignores the other half of Romney's proposal for the tax code, which is to roll back deductions, credits and exemptions. Granted, Romney hasn't specified which of those breaks he would eliminate, or the total value thereof. He's simply said that, after factoring economic growth, the changes in tax law would neither increase nor reduce the federal deficit. Talking about the cost of the tax plan by looking only at the rate cuts and not the offsetting reduction in tax breaks is like saying a rainbow is red, yellow and orange.
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