Numbers are the rope in stimulus tug-of-war

By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 7:17 p.m.

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The Congressional Budget Office "estimates that only 15 percent of this stimulus package will be spent in 2009" and only 37 percent in 2010.

Pat Roberts, Thursday, February 5th, 2009.

Ruling: Barely True | Details

On attacks by Republicans that various programs in the economic stimulus plan are not stimulative, "If you add all that stuff up, it accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall package."

Barack Obama, Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009.

Ruling: Half-True | Details

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Obama says critics are griping about a tiny part of the bill.

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 .