Distorting the Facts
There has been a lot of talk today about a WSJ article talking about the totally insane rise of overseas trips taken by members of Congress on the taxpayers dime. If you read Ed at Hot Air you can quickly see where the problem is:
Democrats ran on the Culture of Corruption charge in 2006 and gained control of both chambers of Congress on the promise to clean up Capitol Hill. The Wall Street Journal finds instead that Democrats have used their power to spend taxpayer dollars on high-priced global travel. Taxpayer-funded Congressional delegation travel has increased by 50% since the Democrats took charge:
Sounds like the Democrats are just wasting away all our money – doesn’t it? Even the WSJ alludes to this:
Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.
But that isn’t the worse part. Let’s look at the actual graph the WSJ supplied:Sire
Sure the Democrats have increased the spending by 50%, but what about the almost 600% it went up under Republican control? Ed doesn’t seem to mention that. He also seems to not notice any of the Republicans mentioned in the article, like:
