As usual, I was listening in my car this morning to WCBS, the CBS newsradio station in New York. To put it mildly, I was amazed at the level of spin that was masquerading as news. Now that there is a debt deal in Washington, CBS is promoting "news" that it wants to hear, not what actually happened. Here are some examples:
1) According to the business reporter, the cuts in the debt deal will mean higher unemployment and slower economic growth this year. This statement is clearly untrue. Indeed, it is so far from reality that I assume that it was just put out there by CBS in an attempt to shift blame for the poor economy from Obama to the Republicans who insisted on spending cuts. The truth is that in the next fiscal year, the level of spending cuts is six billion dollars. That's right, six billion dollars. Here's the description from a listing of the plan's features that I believe is accurate:
"The [spending] caps would be relatively modest at first to avoid stifling the shaky economy -- spending for the fiscal year that begins October 1 would be only $6 billion below the current level of $1.049 trillion. The caps would have a greater impact in later years, when it is hoped that the economy will have recovered."
Let's put this into context. Six billion dollars is about 0.15% of the federal budget. It is about 0.04% of GDP. In other words, this supposed cut is less than a rounding error. Indeed, many folks are furious that after all the upset and drama of the last few months, the cuts are so small. We can argue about the merits of the cuts, but on thing is certain: the cuts will not raise unemployment nor slow growth of GDP. CBS is just spinning.
2) According to CBS, the American people are all enraged at the process that was followed to come to the agreement. CBS says that the people wanted Congress to come to a deal in a more orderly fashion. Again, this is just spin. CBS interviewed people on the street in New York and picked out the responses that they liked. A few anecdotal responses do not support broad conclusions about America. Nevertheless, these responses do support that broad consensus among liberal media outlets that Republicans were holding the country hostage. A fair way to look at the issue would be to wait a week for the outlines of the full deal to emerge and than to poll people across the nation. But that would be reporting actual news, so it is not in the CBS playbook.
There were a few more instances of pure spin, but it is annoying me just to repeat them, so I will not. The actual keys about the debt deal are these:
1)For the first time in recent memory, there has actually been a long term spending cut plan adopted. Considering that president Obama started the year with a budget plan that called for substantial spending increases, the change in direction is extraordinary.
2)In all of the negotiations about the debt ceiling, the president never once proposed his own plan as to how to proceed. Senate Democrats did have the Reid plan, but that could not even pass the Senate. In short, all the plans put forward came from the GOP. The House GOP passed a budget and two further plans to which the Senate Democrats said no. Clearly, the leadership that got the country out of this mess came from the GOP. In fact, the Obama lack of leadership was appalling.
3)The so-called trigger mechanisms that are designed to force agreement by both the commission and the Congress to future cuts are skewed towards the Democrats. Absent agreement to other cuts, there will be substantial cuts in defense and Medicare. The Medicare cuts, however, will be cuts in payments to providers, not to beneficiaries. In other words, if there is no agreement, it is hospitals and doctors that will suffer, not the elderly. If, in fact, those cuts actually go into effect, the result will be that some providers will leave the Medicare system, thereby reducing care options for the elderly. At the same time, the insurance plans that supplement Medicare may be forced to make up the difference with the result that these plans will be driven out of business by the much increased expenses. All in all, I doubt that the Demcrats will be too upset that doctors, insurance companies and hospitals get less. And putting this in other terms, does anyone think that if the Medicare cuts go into effect that there will not be a move in Congress to undo them? Anyone who opposes that move will be blamed for taking healthcare from Grandma.
In other words, this part of the deal is truly slanted towards the Democrats. Can you say tax increases are coming?
4)By making most of the cuts to spending hit in the out years, the deal puts most of the reductions into fantasy land. If the Democrats take back total control of the government in 2012, these cuts will disappear faster than and ice cube in the Sahara Desert.
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