Oh, well, you see...uh....gee, the CBO said that, did they?
Reported by Marie Therese - August 15, 2004 -
Big Story with John Gibson. August 13, 2004. 5:03 PM to 5:07 PM EDT
Reports by James Rosen in Beaverton, OR with the Bush campaign and Carl Cameron, Fox News Correspondent in Portland, OR on the stump with the Kerry/Edwards campaign.
ROSEN: "The President began his day by showing off the benefits of incumbency. He flew into the Portland Industrial Park to announce that he's committing $15 million from the fiscal year 2005 budget to deepening the Columbia River, a project near and dear to residents here...."
Later, from Portland, OR, Carl Cameron reports that it is the wrap-up of the Kerry/Edwards "Believe in America" tour.
CAMERON: "43 buses, 17 trains, 7 helicopters, 3 planes and 1 ferry is how he got here! Seizing on the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report today that the Bush tax cuts have decreased the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans, but has increased the share of taxes that the middle class pays, Sen. Kerry at his rally here - massive downtown Portland event - and earlier today...he talked specifically about the CBO Report and it was one big 'I told you so' from John Kerry."
Interestingly FOX then shows a clip of Kerry commenting about the CBO report but at an earlier, smaller rally. Guess it wouldn't have done Bush/Cheney any good for FOX viewers to see what CNBC reported as 30,000 people at Kerry's Portland rally.
Faced with the devastating implications of the CBO report for the Bush campaign, the FOX spinmeisters rushed to find anything to use as a counter argument.
CAMERON: "But, there are a number of things that make it somewhat difficult for Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush to argue about the state of the economy. It is a real puzzlement. Oregon is the fastest growing ... job growth state - second fastest - in the country. Jobs are being created here at a fairly fast clip. On the other hand the unemployment rate is the second highest in the nation...So, you have the Kerry campaign noting that unemployment here is at 6.8%, far above the national average and the second worst in the country, and the Bush campaign noting that job growth here is the second fastest in the country...and things are good. Voters are going to have to decide this in a couple of months, apparently, John."
Jobs are being created at a fast rate, meaning that in the past six months the unemployment rate has dropped from 7.2% to the current 6.8%. This is a changing number, a dynamic and constantly moving figure.
The unemployment rate simply says that at this point in time 6.8 out of every 100 people in Oregon is unemployed. It's a fixed number arrived at by a series of complex calculations and, by common agreement, released on a fixed date.
How do you compare a changing number to a static number?
To me, it looks like apples and oranges.
But that's never stopped the Republicans before.
