January 18, 2012
The NYT went overboard in an effort to present numbers in no context whatsoever when it discussed efforts to pay for the extension of the payroll tax cut for the rest of 2012. The article discusses the cost of various spending cut proposals without putting them in any context whatsoever, including even the number of years involved.
For example, it told readers that requiring a Social Security number to claim the child tax cut would save $9.4 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office. The article never gives a time period over which these savings would be realized.
Presumably, this is a 10-year estimate. Over this period, the federal government is projected to spend more than $43 trillion, so these savings would amount to a bit more than 0.02 percent of projected spending over this period. It would be helpful to include some context when presenting these numbers, otherwise they have little meaning to readers.
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