The NYT reports that money appropriated for President Bush's Millennium Challenge Corporation has gone largely unspent, leaving open the possibility that it will be reallocated to other programs. The article reports that $4.8 billion was allocated for the program. It would have been helpful if the article had placed this figure in some context so that readers would be able to recognize its importance to the budget. The $4.8 billion figure is a multi-year appropriation, Congress has never appropriated more than $2 billion in a year from the corporation. This figure is approximately equal to 0.07 percent of federal spending or $6.70 for every person in the country. Polls consistently show that the public hugely overestimate the share of the budget that goes to foreign aid. This is partially due to the fact that news reporting rarely places spending numbers in a context that is understandable to their audience. Almost no one can assess the importance of a $4.8 billion appropriation over an unspecified number of years. The NYT also could have told readers that the $50 billion at stake in adjusting the alternative minimum tax is equal to 1.6 percent of federal spending, approximately 25 times as much as the largest annual appropriation for the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
--Dean Baker
