Debate Was a Numbers Game, but How Does It All Add Up?

Numbers flew like shrapnel at Tuesday night’s first debate between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.

Gore was, by far, the most aggressive in marshaling statistics against his rival. He peppered Bush with a dizzying array of ratios, mostly meant to highlight the differences in their approaches toward allocating the anticipated federal budget surplus.

But even Bush, while repeatedly accusing his rival of “fuzzy math,” managed to fire a few numbers back across the stage.

How did the candidates’ calculations add up? Here’s a look at some of the principal statistics each man cited--and how they square with their actual proposals.

*

GORE ASSERTIONS

* “For every dollar that I propose in spending for things like education and health care, I will put another dollar into middle-class tax cuts.”

Verdict: Literally true, but misleading. According to Gore’s campaign manifesto, Prosperity for America’s Families, the vice president would cut taxes by $480 billion over the next decade. During that same period, he proposes to spend a comparable amount solely on education and health care ($575 billion); but his total new spending would be $795 billion by his estimate--and significantly more by GOP calculations. Either way, Gore’s total spending exceeds his tax cuts, which may not be the impression he left.

* “And for every dollar that I spend in those two categories, I’ll put two dollars toward paying down the national debt.”

Verdict: True by his own estimates. Gore puts the total 10-year cost of his spending and tax cut proposals at $1.5 trillion and would allocate $3 trillion over that period toward debt-reduction. The $3 trillion would come from the anticipated surpluses in Social Security ($2.3 trillion) and Medicare ($463 trillion) receipts and $300 billion in on-budget surpluses that he proposes to set aside as a reserve. Republicans believe Gore’s spending plans would cost significantly more than he estimates, which would leave less remaining for debt reduction.

* Bush “would spend more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% than all of the new spending he proposes for education, health care, prescription drugs and national defense. . . . Almost half of all the tax cut benefits under Gov. Bush’s plan go to the wealthiest 1%.”

Verdict: True, as far as it goes, but it misses one important point.

Any across-the-board cut in income tax rates would result in the rich reaping big benefits because they bear a big share of the nation’s tax burden. Many independent analysts still favor such cuts over the kind of targeted tax breaks that Gore proposes because they are simple, easy to understand and easy to administer.

Gore bases his claim that the top 1% would receive nearly half the benefits of the $1.3 trillion Bush cuts on a study by the generally liberal Citizens for Tax Justice. The group concluded that 42.6% of the cuts would go to this group, which includes those with annual incomes of $319,000 or more.

To calculate the figure, the group assumes that all $240 billion in benefits from Bush’s proposed elimination of the estate tax would go to the top 1%. Bush campaign officials dispute that, saying it’s impossible to know who would benefit from the cut. The tax only applies after the first $675,000 in assets.

If only half the estate tax cuts goes to the top 1%, along with the income tax cuts they would enjoy, that would put the cost of Bush’s tax plan at about $400 billion for the most affluent. According to the Bush campaign’s own figures, the Texan would spend $382 billion on the programs Gore cited: education, health care, prescription drugs and defense.

* Under Bush’s prescription drug plan, “95% of all seniors would get no help whatsoever . . . for the first four or five years.”

Verdict: Arguable to misleading, though Bush’s response was also misleading. Bush’s proposed prescription drug plan has two stages. In the long term, he’s proposing a fundamental overhaul of Medicare that would include subsidies to help seniors purchase prescription drug coverage from private insurers. In the short term, he’s proposed $48 billion in grants to states over four years to help purchase prescription drugs for seniors earning up to 175% of the poverty level--about $19,700 for a couple. Bush’s staff says that cutoff would make at least 25% of seniors eligible for the short-term aid.

Gore bases his figure on a calculation by Emory University professor Kenneth E. Thorpe--a former Clinton administration official whose independence Republicans question. Based on participation in existing state programs to provide prescriptions to low-income seniors, Thorpe projects that only about 600,000 seniors--or 5% of all Medicare recipients without drug coverage--would actually participate. Gore’s comments may have left the impression, though, that only 5% of seniors would be eligible for help.

Still, Gore was correct when he said an elderly couple earning $25,000 would not be eligible for short-term aid under Bush’s program--despite Bush’s denial. And Gore’s competing proposal would make prescription drug coverage a universal entitlement under Medicare--which would reach far more seniors more quickly, but at about double the 10-year cost to the government.

* “In my 10-year budget proposal I have set aside more than twice as much for [national defense] as Gov. Bush has in his proposal.”

Verdict: True. Gore’s 10-year budget would increase defense spending by $100 billion; Bush has called for a $45-billion increase.

*

BUSH ASSERTIONS

* Gore’s budget “plan is three times larger than President Clinton’s proposed plan eight years ago. It’s a plan that will have 200 new programs . . . or expanded programs. It will create 20,000 new bureaucrats. . . . He’s going to grow the federal government in the largest increase since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965.”

Verdict: Dubious.

The Bush campaign comes up with figures that are three times Clinton’s 1992 budget or LBJ’s spending plan at the start of the Great Society only by counting about half of Gore’s tax cuts as spending increases. For example, they do that for Gore’s subsidies to help middle-income families save for retirement. But applying the same rules to Bush makes him look like nearly as big a spender as Gore.

When Gore proposals are measured against the usual yardstick of spending as a percentage of the economy, they look considerably more modest. Spending in the Clinton-Gore budget for the current fiscal year is the lowest since 1966. By 2008, under Gore’s plan, it would be the lowest in 50 years.

* In the Social Security system, “there’s enough money to pay seniors today” and fund his proposed individual investment accounts for younger workers.

Verdict: True, but only for the time being. Over the next decade, the Social Security system is expected to take in almost $2.3 trillion more than it pays out in benefits. That would allow government to fund individual investment accounts--whose 10-year cost is estimated at $1 trillion--while using the other half of the Social Security surplus to pay down the national debt. (Gore would devote all of that $2.3 trillion to debt reduction.)

The problem is that the Social Security surplus evaporates when the baby boomers retire; starting in 2015, the system will be obligated to pay out more in benefits than it receives in revenue.

At that point, Washington could pay for the individual accounts only by making large transfers of general revenue dollars, or by going into debt.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

46.5 Million Watch Debate

An estimated 46.5 million people watched Tuesday’s debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, according to Nielsen Media Research. About that many saw the first duel between President Clinton and Bob Dole four years ago, but Tuesday’s audience fell far short of the all-time record of 80 million people who tuned in to watch President Carter and Ronald Reagan square off in 1980.

*

TONIGHT’S VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

* Time: 6-7:30 p.m. PDT

* Location: Centre College in Danville, Ky.

* TV: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC

* Radio: KABC-AM (790), KNX-AM (1070), KCRW-FM (89.9), KPCC-FM (89.3)

* Other Bush-Gore debates: Oct. 11 and Oct. 17