MediaWatch: July 1993
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: July 1993
- The Most Common Politically Motivated Statistical Exaggerations
- NewsBites: Conservative Corporations?
- Revolving Door: City Hall Calling
- Reporters Insist Budget is Half Tax Hikes, Half Cuts
- Globe Concedes Liberal Tilt
- Limousine Liberals
- nsists No 'Left-Liberal Line' in Essays
- Janet Cooke Award: Discovery Channel Series Starts Out As Slanted As CBS
Reporters Insist Budget is Half Tax Hikes, Half Cuts
Siding with Clinton's Math
During the Senate debate over the Clinton budget plan, Republicans insisted the Democrats would raise at least three times as much money in taxes as they would save in spending cuts. The Clintonites countered that their plan offered half tax hikes and half spending cuts. Guess which side the media favored?
USA Today's Richard Wolf claimed on June 17 that Senate adjustments to Clinton's budget "gives his five-year, $500 billion deficit reduction package slightly more spending cuts than tax increases."
In the June 28 issue, Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein complained that "Republicans...have a curious way of calculating the spending-cuts-to-tax-increase ratio: they consider loophole closing -- like Clinton's proposal to reduce the deductibility of business meals from 80 to 50 percent -- a tax increase; thus, Bob Dole can say that the Clinton plan is 3-to-1 taxes to cuts."
U.S. News & World Report Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger also went to bat for the Clinton budget on the June 18 Washington Week in Review: "The Republicans argue that it's three dollars in tax increases for one dollar in spending cuts, but I think it's really more 50-50. That's an important thing to get out to the American public."
Borger's colleague, David Hage, agreed. In the July 5 issue he reported the ratio in the Democratic House and Senate bills "verge on a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts, according to U.S. News calculations." Among the "spending cuts" listed: "Debt service and other."
The networks also adopted the White House's one-to-one formula. On the June 23 World News, CNN's Susan Rook noted "the economic package now in the Senate reduces the federal deficit by more than $500 billion dollars with spending cuts and $249 billion in tax increases."
Reporters didn't cite the figures of the Democrats' Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which President Clinton declared to be the official number-crunchers when he introduced his budget in February. The CBO calculated the tax-hike-to-spending-cut ratio at about $2.50-to-$1.
Major media reporters also ignored the House Republican Conference analysis that detailed how $3.45 of the $5 in supposedly new spending cuts shouldn't count. One dollar is really projected debt service savings from projected low interest rates. Another $1.35 comes from unspecified cuts promised in the future, 30 cents from user fees. The final 80 cents represent cuts already approved in the 1990 budget deal, "leaving only $1.55 of true spending cuts in every $10 of deficit reduction."
