Fiction Roundup: The President's "Tight" Budget
"The budget President Clinton submits to Congress Monday will be one of the tightest in memory, while his initiatives will mean cuts for some popular programs." - Front-page "Inside" plug, February 6 Washington Post.
"The Clinton budget goes to
Capitol Hill, and from the President on down, the administration
goes all out to defend one of the tightest fiscal proposals in
memory."
- CNN anchor Judy Woodruff beginning Inside
Politics, February 7.
"Topic A this morning, the
President's budget. Mr. Clinton is catching flak from the right
and the left over the $1.5 trillion budget that gets its formal
unveiling today. The new budget would eliminate some programs,
cut spending for others, and lower the deficit."
- CBS
This Morning co-host Paula Zahn, February 7.
"The President's claims to
budget-cutting fervor has some plausibility. The deficit is down
- perhaps 40 percent more than had been predicted, and Clinton
vowed to submit a 'tough' budget next week. In many ways, it
will be. He'll propose cutting hundreds of programs and
eliminating dozens of others."
- Newsweek
reporter Howard Fineman, February 7 issue.
"Clinton had a role in
keeping [interest rates] low by fighting and winning a battle
for his budget bill last spring. That victory demonstrated to
financial markets that Clinton was not going to be a
big-spending Democrat."
- Los Angeles Times
reporter James Flanigan, January 26.
Reality Check:
"Even by Mr. Clinton's own
budget table, domestic spending will climb by $11 billion in
fiscal 1995 to $227.2 billion, or a healthy 5 percent."
- Wall
Street Journal editorial on discretionary domestic spending
rising at twice the inflation rate, February 9.
Reagan's Whopping Deficit Conspiracy
"Call it Ronald Reagan's
revenge. The whopping deficit he left behind, together with the
Bush-era caps on federal spending, has forced Bill Clinton to
adopt many of his predecessors' spending cuts to pay for
watered-down Democratic spending increases."
- Wall
Street Journal reporters David Wessel and David Rogers
starting a front-page budget story, February 8.
"It was Ronald Reagan who
left Clinton and his successors in this budget bind by letting
the deficit run up so breathtakingly, an apt way for an opponent
of big government to ensure it didn't explode again after his
departure from office."
- Knight-Ridder reporter Gary
Blonston, February 8 Philadelphia Inquirer.
Reality Check:
"The budget for the 1995
fiscal year...forecasts spending of $1.5 trillion and a deficit
of $176 billion, the lowest since 1989."
- New York
Times referring to Reagan's last budget, February 8.
That Deficit-Cutting Health Plan
"But these [spending hikes]
were subordinate to the administration's overriding objective:
lowering the government's chronic deficit. Even Clinton's
health-care legislation, often portrayed in humanitarian terms
as a way of providing coverage for the uninsured and security
for everyone else, became simply another tool to hold down
projected federal shortfalls in the 1990s."
- Chicago
Tribune reporter Michael Arndt, February 8. (That day the
Congressional Budget Office estimated Clinton's plan would
increase the budget deficits by $74 billion over the next six
years, instead of cutting them by $59 billion.)
Sounds Like He'll Fit Right In
"Mr. North is tough, smart,
and extremely hard-working....He is also an accomplished liar
and a shameless self-promoter."
- Ted Koppel on U.S.
Senate candidate Oliver North, January 28 Nightline.
Clinton the Courageous
"Clinton is doing very much
what he intended to do when he came into office, he's trying to
rebuild the government to serve the people in a fashion that he
feels that is has not served in the last 12 years. And he's
being very courageous in putting forward programs to do that.
Naturally, his programs are considered by some almost
revolutionary because they are real change and in that he's
doing his very best."
- Walter Cronkite on the Late
Show with David Letterman, February 7.
No Elbows Ever Motivated a Post Story
"I thought that American
Spectator piece was pretty much trash and I thought you
could see the elbows in it all the way, he was determined to do
something. But I don't know how to cure that except not read
it."
- Former Washington Post Executive Editor
Ben Bradlee about David Brock's Arkansas state trooper expos
on CNBC's Tim Russert, February 7.
Cheers for Socialized Medicine
"Yet lawmakers should
preserve two of Clinton's key principles that are the best
options among an array of unattractive choices. First is the
so-called employer mandate....The second principle that should
be preserved is universal coverage, or the guarantee that all
Americans will have health insurance....With an aging
population, rising health outlays will be with us forever. But
universal coverage, delivered through managed health systems, is
the best hope for spending those dollars more efficiently.
Congress should swallow its aversion to confronting people with
the upfront price - new taxes - and get moving toward this
fundamental goal."
- U.S. News & World Report
Senior Editor Susan Dentzer, February 14 issue.
"Everyone is applauding, I
think, in the health care community, the emphasis on universal
access, because they know that unless they're going to let some
people just die in the streets, it makes sense to get medical
care early, when it's going to be more effective and less
costly....the insurance companies are the focal point for the
dynamics of denial that are part of our present for-profit
system."
- ABC medical editor Dr. Tim Johnson, January 26 World
News Tonight.
Radical Right and Racist Rush
"So what should good
Republicans do? First, they should try to practice some
self-restraint in their childish instinct to offer one-upmanship
on welfare reform and crime...Granted, some of the conservative
ideas are too radical for mass consumption, even though
Americans might embrace the values underpinning them. The
Charles Murray notion to end welfare, for example, shouldn't fly
- and won't."
- U.S. News & World Report
Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger, February 7.
"Last month Senator Ernest
Hollings joked about Africans being cannibals, but no other
white Senators were pressured to condemn him. Rush Limbaugh and
Howard Stern make questionable racial remarks, and yet President
Bush invited Limbaugh to the White House, and Senator Alfonse
D'Amato attended Stern's book party."
- Time
Christopher John Farley on controversy over anti-Semitic remarks
made by Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Abdul Muhammad, February 7.
Not Enough Liberals on TV
"It is
interesting that political conservatives seem to have so much
greater representation on television than liberals do. And yet,
what the conservatives are always saying is that TV is too
liberal."
- Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales
on CNN's Inside Politics, January 27.
Publisher: L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig,
Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: David Muska, Clay Waters