response 37 of 107:

Feb 2 01:32 UTC 2006

FactCheck.org has published their analysis of the State of the Union  
address.  They found nothing factually incorrect, but several instances 
of statistics being used selectively. I'll copy the summary here; the 
full text is at http://www.factcheck.org/article376.html  
 
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The President left out a few things when surveying the State of the  
Nation:  
  
* He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of  
self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of  
democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither  
Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very  
group whose statistics he cited.  
  
* Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention  
that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional  
in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional  
amendment, but none have shown signs of life.  
  
* The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past  
two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs  
in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush  
took office is just a little more than 2 million.  
  
* He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary  
spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent  
since Bush took office.  
  
* He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by  
2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the  
Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than  
half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.  
  
* Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil,  
failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum  
products increased substantially during his first five years in office,  
reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.