Mark, Michele is making excellent use of one of the (many) flabbergasting facts in your tremendous book (I should say problematic book — it’s a problem for me in the sense that I have work to do but I can’t put it down). Here she is in the Fox interview with Chris Wallace yesterday, about 14 minutes in, giving what’s become her favorite example of why we need to reject President Obama’s “new normal” government spending levels:
We had one employee at the federal Department of Transportation that made $170,000 a year at the beginning of the recession. We had the trillion dollar stimulus and eighteen months into the recession we had 1,690 employees making over $170,000. Government has really been growing at a lot of largesse. But people in the real world aren’t. And that’s what has to change. Government has no conformity at all with the real world.
No conformity at all — as Mark says, “They’re upturn girls living in a downturn world.”
When you fight fire with Steyn, Fire has to be hospitalized with third-degree burns.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFactcheck.org: "Bachmann wrongly blamed President Obama for increasing the number of federal transportation workers who earn more than $170,000 from one to 1,690 during the recession. At least two-thirds of those employees were receiving more than $170,000 before Obama took office."
You could argue any increase is too much. But let's at least use *actual facts* to make the case, eh?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for this fact check - I'd suspected the stat was a load.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJoel,
read her quote again - she blames 'govt spending in general'. Her quote is factually correct - your comment is the one that's inaccurate. And Obama recommended in Jan2010 a 2% increase in federal wages, so he's throwing gas on the govt fire.
Source: USA Today External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHer quote is not factually correct.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe quote, as she spoke it, is 100% correct. Since the start of the recession, the number of workers making over $170K increased from one to 1690. She never said that Obama was directly responsible for all of the increase.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmm. Well, if Bachmann had actually blamed that increase on President Obama, your comment would be relevant. But she didn't, and what she said is true.
I love the way you make stuff up and then insist on using *actual* facts. That's hilarious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat are the dates of the recession?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWelcome, seminar posters. Hang around for awhile, maybe some sanity will rub off on you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEasily debunked statements are clearly not the way to prosecute the open and shut case against Barack. It doesn't take a "seminar" poster to realize that.
Are you putting forth the idea that the statistic is accurate?
If so, that would be helpful. If not, your post is an absolute waste of space and time.
Have a nice day.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah, you're entire post is premised on a "fact" that is not a "fact"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExternal Link
Classic Bachmann, of course!
If you had simply read the link you provided you would have found this little nugget under the quote referenced:
"Let's take the federal pay first. Bachmann's statistics are correct, but misleading because most of the 1,690 DOT employees she cites were already being paid more than $170,000 before Obama took office."
Did you catch the part where they state that the STATISTICS ARE CORRECT? And while Factcheck may find the statement misleading, she clearly says "when the recession started," NOT "since Obama took office."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou did hear the Bachmann interview on MTP yesterday, right?
"There is only one employee at the Federal Department of Transportation that made over $170,000 a year at the beginning of the recession; 18 months into the recession there were 1,690 employees at the Federal Department of Transportation that made over $170,000 a year. ***Government grew exponentially from the stimulus*** while private businesses were closing their doors and letting people off in real America. "
link
She did say "during the recession", but she also linked the increase in DoT salaries to the stimulus (which wasn't passed into law until February 2009), by which point the vast majority of those jobs she cited were already created.
It's a nice little bit of conflation that plays well to Tea Partiers' irrational hatred of All Things Government. This sort of thing worked pretty well for Bush and Cheney in the leadup to the Iraq War too, IIRC.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDisagree.
The quote in question, in its entirety:
Bachmann, June 26: "I’ll tell you one thing that should be on the table, under Barack Obama the last two years the number of federal limousines for bureaucrats has increased seventy-three percent, in two years…. When you’re increasing federal limousines seventy-three percent or let me give you another example, the Department of Education or — or Transportation. When the recession started, there was one employee that made over hundred seventy thousand a year. A year and a half into the recession, we had 1,690 employees that were making over one hundred seventy thousand a year."
Unless I'm missing something and there was a commercial break in between her cockamamie limo bit and the DoT salary talking point, she clearly prefaced her argument with "...under Barack Obama..."
You know darn well she meant that Obama was responsible for the pay raises, and bloated government spending in general; THAT was/is her message. Whether it is actually true or not does not concern her.
Funny...when I "mislead" my parents about why I missed curfew, or "misstated facts" about how the empty beer cans got into the trunk of Dad's car, I got grounded for lying.
Rep. Bachmann should go to her room.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFactCheck is wrong here, not Bachmann. Bachmann said "eighteen months into the recession". FactCheck somehow transmuted this into "since the start of Obama's Presidency".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFactcheck.org is correct, you are wrong. Bachmann made her (false) charge in response to an interviewer specifically asking her to cite examples of President Obama's failure to reign in federal spending. This was her response. Do you claim she somehow misunderstood the question?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSorry, but how much clearer can this be:
"According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. As of September 2007, three months before the recession started, only one DOT employee — the Secretary of Transportation — made more than $170,000, according to an online database maintained by the Office of Personnel Management. By June 2009, when the bureau declared the recession had ended, there were 1,690 employees in the Department of Transportation making more than $170,000 a year."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"OPM's database also shows that 1,122 of the 1,690 DOT employees cited by Bachmann were earning more than $170,000 in pay as of September 2008 — nine months into the recession — while President George W. Bush was still in office. OPM's next data set isn't until March 2009 and, by that time, Obama had been in office for less than three months. By March 2009, the DOT was paying 1,686 of its employees more than $170,000. That's nearly all of the 1,690 DOT employees she cites as earning more than $170,000 by the end of the recession."
I think a more significant statistic would be percentage increase in salary - you can pick any high number and say that only one person had a higher salary than that, but if many people had salarys at one dollar less, and received a two dollar raise, all of a sudden you have a large number of people with salary increases above that arbitrary number.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOPM's database also shows that 1,122 of the 1,690 DOT employees cited by Bachmann were earning more than $170,000 in pay as of September 2008 — nine months into the recession — while President George W. Bush was still in office. OPM's next data set isn't until March 2009 and, by that time, Obama had been in office for less than three months. By March 2009, the DOT was paying 1,686 of its employees more than $170,000. That's nearly all of the 1,690 DOT employees she cites as earning more than $170,000 by the end of the recession.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere it is: 1718 employees making between 160,000 and 169,999 in September 2007. So when they got the almost 4% salary hike passed in 2008 (only slightly higher than GWB wanted), that could easily bumped many up above $170k. Stats don't lie, but people do mislead.
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