MediaWatch: February 1990
Table of Contents:
Media Slate "Peace Dividend" for Social Spending
WAGING WAR ON DEFENSE
The new Bush budget hadn't even been released before the networks attacked the President for inadequate cuts in defense spending. On January 8, ABC News Pentagon correspondent Bob Zelnick got a jump on his colleagues, predicting: "Critics will likely claim that the Pentagon should have taken more account of this past year's dramatic changes in Eastern Europe."
Used to complaining about Republican "budget gimmickry," the network budget analysts did some cagey number-crunching of their own. Dan Rather led off the January 29 CBS Evening News: "President Bush came out with his election-year budget today. It calls for some cuts in defense spending, much bigger cuts in domestic programs." Lesley Stahl concurred: "While the budget does call for a two percent cut in military spending, the President would cut far more out of the domestic budget." Among "some of the big losers": education, "which gets slightly less than the amount needed to keep up with inflation." How the education increase is a "much bigger cut" than the actual cut in defense is anybody's guess.
On Nightline a few hours later, ABC's Jim Wooten told viewers of "the dreaded federal deficit, created, for the most part, by the most massive peacetime military buildup in America's history." That's some interesting math. Defense spending is a quarter of the budget and has decreased 16 percent in the past five years, while "entitlements" take half the budget and have grown sharply.
Time went to bat against Bush with the subheadline: "Yes, Bush is finally cutting defense. But with a clearer vision of America's responsibilities in a changing world, he could save billions more." How? "Research for the Strategic Defense Initiative could be cut from $4.5 billion to $3 billion a year," not to mention "The armed forces' 2 million manpower could be halved." Suggesting cuts "far deeper" than the Bush budget, a Time chart relayed the recommendations of the liberal Defense Budget Project and Brookings Institution.
Dazzled by the prospect of a "peace dividend" diverting tax dollars to the ever-growing demands of social engineering schemes, Jim Wooten was typical: "$150 billion in real money by 1999, badly needed for the alleviation of a lot of pressing problems in the country. Problems like homelessness and housing, for example, and health care for the elderly and day care for the children of working parents and what have you." Ignored by network reporters: any thought a "peace dividend" belongs to the taxpayers, not the federal government.
