Last week, our opponent Erik Paulsen ran an ad in which he called himself "the math guy." When you run an ad calling yourself "the math guy", it goes without saying that you had better be pretty darn good at math. Once again, Paulsen proved that his rhetoric and his actions don't match up. Paulsen sent out a taxpayer funded mailing from his office with a helpful incredibly misleading graph of the national debt.
You lose your credibility as a fiscal conservative and as a "math guy", let alone a 7th grade algebra student, when you intentionally distort data to make a point. Oh, and by the way. YOU, the taxpayer, paid for this. Paulsen has already been called out for being one of the biggest spenders on taxpayer-funded campaign mail in Congress, and once again he has shown that he is out of touch with his constituents. In these tough economic times, taxpayers shouldn't be funding ANY campaign mail, let alone pieces like these that are intentional distortions of data in order to get re-elected.
Here's Paulsen's graph:
And here's what it would look like if, you know, a "math guy" put it together:
3 problems with "the math guy's" numbers:
- Paulsen’s 2009 figure ($12.86 trillion) minus the 2007 figure ($8.45 trillion) yields an increase of $4.41 trillion—or 2.2 trillion per year; and the 2012 figure ($16.17 trillion) minus the 2009 figure ($12.86 trillion) yields an increase of $3.31 trillion—or 1.1 trillion per year. Paulsen’s graph shows the 2009-2012 increase ($3.31 trillion) as more than twice the size of the 2007-2009 increase ($4.41 trillion). Somehow, an increase of a projected $1.1 trillion per year under President Obama is depicted as drastically sharper than the 2.2 trillion per year increase under President Bush.
- While the first two of Paulsen’s data points have an interval of two years (2007-2009), the third data point is at an interval of three years (2009-2012). Yet the graph shows both time periods as equal, distorting the data and making the 2009-2012 increase appear greater. The correctly constructed graph, with equal time intervals, further indicates a gradual leveling of deficit growth rather than a fast increase.
- As though Paulsen’s graph weren’t warped enough, the 2009-2012 line is also visibly curved to appear as an even more dramatic increase. (Hold a straight edge to it; we’re not kidding.)
As you can see, this isn't exactly Will Hunting level stuff.
After reviewing this data and the graph, Peter Sprangers, a real "math guy", Ph.D. Biostatistics student at Ohio State University, and graduate of the St. Olaf College math department (the same department where Congressman Paulsen earned his degree), said, “Paulsen's graph doesn't look anything like what you would get while using conventional statistics software packages. The only way I can think to generate something like this would be to create a standard line graph, open it in Photoshop, and manually adjust the location of the data points and curvature of the line segments. It's disingenuous at best, malicious at worst.”
Once again, Erik Paulsen's numbers don't add up, and taxpayers are the ones left paying for his distortions and lies with less than two months before the election.
Paulsen has refused to debate Meffert at a public forum because he doesn't want to have to answer for his actions. Call his office at 952-934-8999, tell him to stop making you pay for his misleading campaign mail and ask him why he's afraid to face his constituents at a live debate. You can also get involved by volunteering or giving whatever you can to help us fight back against Erik Paulsen's politics as usual.