MATH FOR JOURNALISTS

By Chris Daly

In recent days, there has been a burst of reporting about the inclusion of "earmarks" in the new omnibus spending bill in Washington. 

We can learn that there are more than 2,300 earmarks in the budget, totalling some $6.6 billion. That sounds bad, and it was bad enough in a meaningful way to Republicans that it became an applause cue in John McCain's acceptance speech.

How how bad is earmarking?

That's hard to say, because when numbers about earmarks are presented in news stories, they usually appear with no useful context. 

One basic question: how do earmarks compare to the total federal budget?

Let's see what happens if we use just a smidgen of math, the kind we can all do in our heads. 

Total U.S. spending is about $3 trillion, which is $3,000,000,000,000.

10% of that is $300,000,000,000 (or, $300 billion)

10% of that (or, 1% of the total)  is $30,000,000,000 (or, $30 billion).

O.K. So, that $6 billion earmarking figure now appears to be less than 1%. As we can see at a glance, it's about a fifth of 1%, or 0.2% of federal spending. 

Now, people may still be honked off about earmarks, and they are entitled to be so. But, as readers, taxpayers and citizens, they are entitled to see it in terms of the big picture. 

So, what is a journalist to do? Having done this kind of calculation, anybody could see that earmarks are a drop in the bucket. Eliminating them altogether would not really change anything meaningful about taxes, the budget, or the deficit. Should a reporter mention all this? 

Isn't it partisan to do so? 

Isn't it partisan not to do so?

 [My personal view, FWIW: After covering budgets on the state level, I must salute John McCain for finding an issue that he can use to rile people up. On the other hand, I feel pretty certain that if McCain wins and really presses this issue in Washington, all he is going to do is to antagonize about 500 members of Congress, throw sand in the gears of government, and end up with not much to show for it all. Just a hunch.]