Misstate of the union
Jonathan Newman
Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: Opinion
Besides the populist rhetoric, partisan pandering and empty promises, Obama used a classic method of deception in his State of the Union Address.
He knows that humans are horrible at interpreting and comparing very large numbers. He knows that when talking about large budgets, deficits, debts and his efforts to manipulate them, he can throw around the words "trillion," "billion" and "million" in ways to make it look like he's doing good things with our money.
Here's one part of his speech that used this trick: "I'm proposing specific steps to pay for the trillion dollars that it took to rescue the economy last year. Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (...) We will continue to go through the budget, line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work. We've already identified $20 billion in savings for next year."
This budget that he is going through "line by line" is worth $3.55 trillion, but, hey, isn't it great that he found $20 billion dollars to save? That's a pretty significant dent, right? Well, one simple division problem reveals that $20 billion is .56% of $3.55 trillion (notice the decimal point - that's just a little more that one-half of one percent). Out of all of the letters in this paragraph, two letters would represent about .56% of it.
Obama wants you to think that he is making great strides and leaps to save money, reduce the deficit and pay back the money it took to "rescue the economy" (it was a trillion dollar band-aid for a dangerously progressed cancer if you ask me). But in reality, he is doing nothing to save money; in fact, he's spending more and plans to spend more than any other administration. This "spending freeze" means nothing. It only applies to 17% of the budget, and he's freezing it after a 22% increase from Bush's budget.
That's not much of a freeze at all. It's more like a scam I would expect from some lose-weight-fast-without-dieting-or-exercise-just-take-this-pill advertisement. He increased the budget 22%, identified .56% of it as savable and then proposed a spending freeze of a mere 17% of it. He thought he could deceive his constituency with an eloquent speech, big numbers and great promises. I hope we aren't the ignorant masses he thinks we are.
There was a larger contradiction in his speech, however. He assigned blame to many people in Washington (but never to himself, of course), portraying the government as some sick, broken entity that needs healing and fixing. Yet at the same time, he urges Americans to accept and believe in the healing powers of the state. We must fix the government, and the government must fix us, he argues. It is this kind of backward logic, brainless politics and illusory doublespeak that pervades his administration and most of the rest of our wise overlords. We aren't sick, government is.
Jonathan Newman is a senior psychology and communication studies double major from Birmingham, Ala. He can be reached at jrnewma1@samford.edu.
He knows that humans are horrible at interpreting and comparing very large numbers. He knows that when talking about large budgets, deficits, debts and his efforts to manipulate them, he can throw around the words "trillion," "billion" and "million" in ways to make it look like he's doing good things with our money.
Here's one part of his speech that used this trick: "I'm proposing specific steps to pay for the trillion dollars that it took to rescue the economy last year. Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (...) We will continue to go through the budget, line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work. We've already identified $20 billion in savings for next year."
This budget that he is going through "line by line" is worth $3.55 trillion, but, hey, isn't it great that he found $20 billion dollars to save? That's a pretty significant dent, right? Well, one simple division problem reveals that $20 billion is .56% of $3.55 trillion (notice the decimal point - that's just a little more that one-half of one percent). Out of all of the letters in this paragraph, two letters would represent about .56% of it.
Obama wants you to think that he is making great strides and leaps to save money, reduce the deficit and pay back the money it took to "rescue the economy" (it was a trillion dollar band-aid for a dangerously progressed cancer if you ask me). But in reality, he is doing nothing to save money; in fact, he's spending more and plans to spend more than any other administration. This "spending freeze" means nothing. It only applies to 17% of the budget, and he's freezing it after a 22% increase from Bush's budget.
That's not much of a freeze at all. It's more like a scam I would expect from some lose-weight-fast-without-dieting-or-exercise-just-take-this-pill advertisement. He increased the budget 22%, identified .56% of it as savable and then proposed a spending freeze of a mere 17% of it. He thought he could deceive his constituency with an eloquent speech, big numbers and great promises. I hope we aren't the ignorant masses he thinks we are.
There was a larger contradiction in his speech, however. He assigned blame to many people in Washington (but never to himself, of course), portraying the government as some sick, broken entity that needs healing and fixing. Yet at the same time, he urges Americans to accept and believe in the healing powers of the state. We must fix the government, and the government must fix us, he argues. It is this kind of backward logic, brainless politics and illusory doublespeak that pervades his administration and most of the rest of our wise overlords. We aren't sick, government is.
Jonathan Newman is a senior psychology and communication studies double major from Birmingham, Ala. He can be reached at jrnewma1@samford.edu.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
April
posted 2/08/10 @ 1:52 PM CST
First of all, the President prefaced the Federal budget discussion portion of his State of the Union address by stating that he would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. (Continued…)
April
posted 2/08/10 @ 2:05 PM CST
Oops! Third line of second paragraph should read: And $20 billion is 2% of $1 trillion, and 2% is a lot more than 1/2 of one percent.
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