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Numbers are the rope in stimulus tug-of-war

Angie Drobnic Holan
By Angie Drobnic Holan February 10, 2009

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 .

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Numbers are the rope in stimulus tug-of-war