MediaWatch: July 1990
Table of Contents:
Make the Rich Pay More & Everybody Else Too
TAXING THE MEDIA'S WAY
Major media reporters have challenged President Bush to raise taxes ever since he issued his "Read my lips: No new taxes" pledge. Now that Bush has "faced reality" by agreeing to raise taxes, some are championing the Democratic crusade to increase the burden on the wealthy, and everyone else.
"President Bush today conceded that new taxes will be necessary to get the federal budget deficit under control," NBC's Tom Brokaw began June 26. Dismissing Bush's promise as unworkable, Steven Roberts and Gloria Borger asserted in U.S. News & World Report: "For almost 18 months, the country's fiscal policy was dictated by a promise that helped elect George Bush President and then crippled his ability to do the job. Last week, Bush finally made a 'surrender to reality,' as Democratic Representative Beryl Anthony of Arkansas put it."
In a July 9 "news" story, Time's George Church insisted that both Democrats and Bush "were recognizing reality. It has long been obvious that spending cuts alone cannot reduce the deficit as much as required. It was obvious in 1988, too. Bush should never have voiced his pledge, he should never have made it the focus of his campaign, and he should have backed off from it long before he did."
CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer enthusiastically embraced class warfare, praising New Jersey Governor Jim Florio for doubling the income tax rate on higher earners, making toilet paper taxable and hiking the sales tax. Schieffer asked: "Is New Jersey starting a trend that could shift some of the tax burden away from the middle class?" During the June 30 story he talked to state resident Carl Smith, "who voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush, [and] feels that he and his wife Cheryl have been on the losing end of the nation's tax system."
"Florio's tax plan is part of a larger attempt to redress what some see as the excesses of the '80s," Schieffer reported, when tax cuts "produced a financial bonanza for many wealthy people. But Florio says it also put too much burden on the middle class." But in The Washington Post the day before, economics columnist Robert Samuelson noted that "in 1990 the wealthiest one percent will pay an estimated 15.7 percent of federal taxes, up from 12.8 percent in 1980." Schieffer didn't bother to mention that or any view challenging his thesis.
After explaining how the tax increase trend is spreading from state to state, Schieffer concluded: "We may be at the end of an era, time when too many people wanted more from government than they were willing to pay for." The next day, 8,000 taxpayers protested the hikes, chanting "Florio must go!" CBS ignored that, too.
