Misleading ‘fact check’ on inflation gets a ‘D’

One of the new things in journalism is running ‘fact checks’ of candidate’s claims. An example comes from KSTP’s recent fact check of an ad by Congressional Candidate Joe Teirab (R).

It notes that “after the biographic information, the ad veers into misleading and false information” and continues:

“Now I’m running for U.S. Congress because career politicians like Angie Craig are killing the American dream with skyrocketing inflation, open borders, insider deals, and corruption,” Teirab says in the ad.

The video shows Teirab jogging through the Twin Cities, passing by a brick wall where a graphic says, “20% inflation, open borders, insider deals” and “corruption.” All of that is listed below Angie Craig’s name.

We’ll take these claims one at a time.

First, overall inflation in the United States in the past few years peaked at 9.1% in July 2022 and is currently about 2.5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is false to say inflation reached 20% at any time while Craig has been in office. Inflation did spike to 9.1% for a variety of reasons, including federal government spending.

Already the supposed ‘fact check’ has itself veered into ‘misleading information.’

Inflation is calculated as the rate of increase in a price index like the Consumer Price Index (CPI). If you want to calculate what inflation has been between any two points in time, you simply calculate the percentage increase in the index over that period.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) most recent news release for the CPI reports:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis…

That is the monthly rate, the increase from July’s index of 313.534 to August’s of 314.121 so that:

(314.121 – 313.534) / 313.534 = 0.2% – the monthly rate of inflation.

The BLS also reports that:

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.5 percent before seasonal adjustment.

This is the annual rate and is calculated exactly the same way as above, except that you use the index figure for August 2023 instead of July 2024. This peaked at 9.0% in June 2022.

We can do this for any period we like. If we calculate the increase in the price level — inflation — since the Biden/Harris administration came to office in January 2021 we get a figure of 19.7%, or 20% if you’re rounding, exactly as Teirab’s ad said. That is slightly down from the peak over 43 months of 20.7% between May 2020 and December 2023, which was the largest increase in nearly 40 years, as Figure 1 shows.

Figure 1: Increase in Consumer Price Index over 43 months

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

This highlights one of the problems with these new ‘fact checks.’ Very often, politicians make claims the truth of which depends on some factor, in this case which period of time Teirab is referring to. If his ad is referring to the monthly or annual rate of inflation then it is incorrect, but if it is referring to the period since Biden/Harris took office then it clearly is correct.

On this count, Teirab’s ad is more accurate than this disappointingly sloppy ‘fact check’.