Surprisingly, the New York Times did an excellent job debunking President Bush's misleading claim to have fulfilled his pledge to cut the deficit in half:
The Treasury Department reported that its preliminary data for the fiscal year 2006, which ended Sept. 30, showed that the federal budget deficit was $248 billion, down from $319 billion in 2005.
Mr. Bush said the new data showed that his administration had succeeded, three years ahead of time, in fulfilling his promise in 2004 to cut the deficit in half by 2009 and underscored the success of his tax cuts. But that promise was based on a projected 2004 deficit of $521 billion; the deficit that year was actually $413 billion.
In fact, as we show in All the President's Spin, there were several such "plans," all of which were based on various forms of budget trickery.
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