Don’t accept bogus figures
Published 4:40 pm Monday, November 8, 2010
If this is the level of budget debate we can expect in Washington, D.C., for the next two years, get the antacids ready.
The obviously bogus claim that President Obama’s visit to India cost taxpayers $200 million a day — more than the daily cost of the war in Afghanistan — was advanced by Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota with ties to the tea party movement. The figure was reported by an Indian press agency, which attributed it to an anonymous Indian provincial official.
That, apparently, was credible enough for Bachmann, who cited the figure repeatedly in a CNN interview as an “example of the massive overspending we’ve seen” since Obama took office.
It’s a better example of Bachmann’s failure to apply even minimal skepticism or diligence to a report that was absurd on its face. That a sitting member of Congress went on national television and repeated it as accepted fact ought to worry presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the incoming GOP leadership, because such behavior could undermine their own credibility.
(Another report from India said the U.S. Navy was stationing 34 ships off the coast of Mumbai for the president’s security. The Pentagon doesn’t usually comment on such stories, but spokesmen Geoff Morrell went ahead and labeled that one “comical.”)
Fortunately, cooler GOP heads in Congress seem to be prevailing. The Washington Post reported Monday that Bachmann’s bid for a leadership role in the next Congress was floundering as “establishment” Republicans lined up behind her opponent.
Presumably, these are Republicans who believe engagement is an essential foreign policy — a view shared by every Republican President since Dwight Eisenhower. They all believed that in pursuit of it, presidents need to travel and communicate, personally and substantively, with foreign leaders.
Few nations have greater strategic and economic importance to the United States than India, the world’s largest democracy. Its complicated relationship with neighboring Pakistan, its status as an established nuclear power, and its force as both an economic competitor and major trade partner with the U.S. make it clearly worthy of the president’s time.
And it goes without saying that in today’s world, protecting the president and those who travel with him is no simple or cheap undertaking. But it shouldn’t become acceptable fodder for those trying to score easy but hollow political points in the important budget debate.
Bringing the federal deficit down will require real discussions, based on real math, about real sacrifices. Those who pull numbers out of thin air, or repeat figures that originated that way, aren’t really trying to solve the problem.
