The Fuzzy Numbers Game

Voters asked for details this year, the candidates responded - firing off numbers like weapons, seeking to destroy the other's credibility, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

Al Gore: "He (George W. Bush) starts with a $1.6 trillion tax cut that gives too much to too few at the expense of too many."

Bush: "My opponent, a man prone to exaggeration at times, seems to be deliberately missing a trillion dollars."

Gore: "He would spend more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent than all of the new spending he proposes."

About the only thing Bush and Gore do agree on is a projected surplus of $4.6 trillion. By law, half goes to Social Security.

Gore says his tax cuts and spending plans would leave more than $1 trillion. Bush claims even with his much larger tax cut, he'd leave a healthy cushion of $400 million. But independent analysts say that by factoring in inflation and average spending growth, Gore's cushion shrinks and Bush's drops into the red. In short, Gore may spend more, but Bush drains more from federal coffers.

Independent analyst Hank Gutman says there is reason to be wary of both candidate's numbers.

"There's plenty that's fuzzy about whether the numbers themselves are any good, because who knows whether any of these estimates are going to happen," Guzman says.

That's because the surplus is fuzzy money. It doesn't exist. It's an optimistic projection from the same experts who several years ago saw depressing deficits stretching into the distant future. So, what good are the numbers?

"We make policy in the United States through our budget. And what the two candidates tell us is how they propose to construct that budget. They are telling us in numbers how they propose to govern," says Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution.

These numbers may be good enough for the campaign trail, but voters shouldn't expect to take the money to the bank.