Apparently, I am not the only person who has been numerically challenged over the past 24 hours. At his press conference today, President Obama said
You have 80 percent of the American people who support a balanced approach. Eighty percent of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and cuts.
As Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake noted, Obama is on thin ice. He seems to have derived that number from a recent Gallup poll finding that only 20 percent of Americans want a deficit reduction deal based solely on spending cuts. But that doesn’t meant that 80 percent of Americans favor a tax-only (or even tax-heavy) approach, which is what the vast majority of the Democratic congressional caucus, and the president, seem to be pushing.
A mere 11 percent favor a deal only or mostly financed with higher revenues. Fully half of Americans want the deal to be mostly or only spending cuts, and 32 percent (not 80) prefer the “balanced” approach Obama referenced.
A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday makes Obama’s stance look even worse: A mere 25 percent favor tax increases “on the wealthy and corporations” as part of a debt ceiling deal.
It’s not the first time a politician has used funny math to promote his agenda. But with so much information now a mere mouse click away, it’s tougher for the number-fudgers to get away with it.
