The PolitiFact fact checkers are at it again, with Tom Kertscher, often dubbed the “worst fact checker ever,” deciding to lazily fact check an obvious opinion statement.
His “fact check” was of a statement from Dan Bongino regarding the costs of Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, specifically Dan’s comment that knowing the incompetence of government, he wouldn’t be surprised if it added more to the deficit than actually ends up being spent on infrastructure. “Nothing he’s telling you is true, yet dumb liberals will continue to fall for his amateur-hour bulls—. Watch the deficit rise by the exact amount of this fake infrastructure bill, and yet programmed liberals will deny the evidence right in front of their eyes,” Dan said.
While the “Watch the deficit rise” portion of the comment should’ve given it away that this was a mere opinion, Tom’s fact checking skills apparently weren’t enough to figure that out either. After being mocked via email over fact checking an opinion statement, he decided against attaching an official ruling to his “fact check” a rarity for the discredited fact-checkers at PolitiFact.
To evaluate the claim we only need two data points: the amount the bill will add to the deficit, and the percent of the bill that is spent on actual infrastructure.
So Tom first tries to quantify the costs of the bill by looking at various estimates. He provides the following estimates (all are over a 10-year period, as is the price tag of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill):
- The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would add a net of $256 billion to deficits from 2021 to 2031.
- The Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania estimates the new deficits would total $351 billion, but provided no further detail.
- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill would add $400 billion to the deficit.
The net cost of a bill is usually a simple calculation; projectives spending minus projecting new taxes collected – but that’s not the case here.
Some of the bill is paid for by using $53 billion in leftover funds stemming from red states terminating federal enhanced unemployment benefits early. In total, $210 billion of the bill is “paid for” using unspent COVID-19 relief funds. In any other situation, the bill would be adding $210 billion more to the deficit than it is here. Or in other words, the adjusted deficit figures should range from $456-$600 billion.
Tom is seemingly and incorrectly assuming that 100% of the dubiously named infrastructure bill will actually go towards infrastructure, because he stops his analysis there and doesn’t even try to quantify how much will be spent on infrastructure relative to deficits (thus also figuring how how much goes elsewhere), leading one to wonder what the point of his article actually is, if not to just meet a quota.
Democrats expanded the definition of “infrastructure” to seemingly everything to justify various spending items, not just “roads and bridges.” The bill doles out $65 billion to spend on broadband ($3 billion of which funds “digital equity,” i.e. internet for prisoners). Another $7.5 billion is allocated for electric vehicle related subsidies, $21 billion for environmental remediation, $55 billion goes towards “water infrastructure,” not anything that helps anyone move. And those are just the obvious examples – we just learned from the Chamber of Commerce that gimmicks in the reconciliation bill are covering up over $1 trillion in spending – who knows if we’ll see something similar here?
So, there’s roughly $150 billion in non-infrastructure spending (as traditionally defined) right there, which is lower than what’s allocated for actual infrastructure, but again, we’re dealing with projections here. It’s never going to be the case that of the remaining “infrastructure” spending is spent efficiently.
In fact, if history if any guide, waste could end up doubling the price tag of the bill if all projects are to be completed.
Of note, government estimates are almost always underestimates. As the Cato Institute notes:
For 91 major programs the GAO examined in 2005, R&D costs were 33 percent overbudget, on average, and procurement costs were 18 percent overbudget. For 78 major programs examined in 2014, R&D costs were 53 percent overbudget, and procurement costs were 46 percent overbudget.
Below is a sampling of just some notable government cost overruns:
Yet this is hardly a recent problem – it’s the rule.
Cost overruns have plagued the federal government since the beginning. Way back in 1836, for example, a Ways and Means Committee report criticized infrastructure spending by the Army Corps of Engineers. All 25 projects reviewed by the committee that year were overbudget, and “many” had cost overruns of 50 percent or more.
Economists Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff studied a sample of major government infrastructure projects in U.S. history and found that most had substantial cost overruns. The construction of the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825, for example, went 46 percent overbudget, while the canal’s later expansion went 142 percent overbudget.
If we’re to count any overspending as “waste,” and overspending on infrastructure items here is proportional to historical cost overruns, the bill will indeed add much more to deficits than winds up being spent on infrastructure.
PolitiFact fact checked an opinion statement – and they couldn’t even do that properly.
You can find our past fact checks of PolitiFact Here:
- Politifact Botches Another Fact Check on New York vs. Florida Coronavirus Deaths
- Politifact Tries and Fails Fact Checking Claim That California Has Six Extra Representatives Due to Illegals
- PolitiFact Botches Fact Check on Maxine Waters Inciting Violence
- PolitiFact’s Worst Fact Checker Plays Defense for VP Harris – Fails Miserably
- Facebook is Censoring Conservatives – Again
- PolitiFact’s Worst Fact Checker Tries (and Fails) at Explaining Bidenflation
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
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