Now that the Republicans’ brazen tax bill that the CBO predicts will add $1.4 trillion to the deficit has passed, yet again exposing “deficit concerns” by congressional Republicans as an empty marketing ploy, will those in the media who pushed the Deficit Doom narrative during the early Obama years admit they were wrong?
Suddenly deficits—something Every Serious Person cared about—are a total nonissue. The Beltway orthodoxy for decades—especially in the years following the 2008 economic crash—that deficits would crush our economy and render the United States insolvent is mysteriously absent from the Republicans’ plan to increase the deficit by equivalent of the GDP of Russia. (To say nothing of September’s budget-busting Defense bill—FAIR.org, 9/21/17.)
During the early Obama years, nominally straight reporting frequently trafficked in deeply ideological assumptions about deficits and debt; echoing “deficit hawk” Paul Ryan and the “populist” Tea Party movement, they painted an image of apocalyptic doom:
- “One urgent concern for lawmakers in both parties is the country’s bleak fiscal outlook, stemming from heavy government spending and ballooning retirement costs.” (Washington Post, 1/5/11)
- “Gold-plated retirement and healthcare packages” (60 Minutes, 12/19/10)
- “Through a combination of hard work, good timing and possibly suicidal guts, the Wisconsin Republican managed to harness his party to a dramatic plan for dealing with America’s rapidly rising public debt.” (Time, 12/14/11)
- “Ryan has proposed major cuts to spending and entitlement programs in an effort to curb the spiraling national debt.” (Washington Post, 8/12/12)
- “If you want to send a message you’re serious about the budget, you could do that with Paul Ryan.” (Meet the Press, 4/22/11)
Carrying water for right-wing axioms about the ticking time-bomb nature of deficits and debts, ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper (now at CNN) aired cartoonish reports on the federal budget in prime time, complete with cheesy “government as family budget” metaphors, and used press conferences to shame President Obama’s press secretary for not doing enough to stop this major problem (2/3/12).
It should be noted this isn’t the first time the media has gotten collective amnesia when it comes to Republicans’ “fiscal hawkery.” The Bush years increased the deficit $1.4 trillion by cutting taxes, funding a bloated military expansion driven by wars of choice and setting up the cynical election-year giveaway Medicare Part D. All of this was washed away when the Tea Party “insurgency” came to power in 2010—a Koch-funded rebranding effort the media also credulously pushed.
Of the 30 congressmembers who formed the initial “fiscal responsibility”–driven Tea Party caucus in 2010, every one who was still in Congress in 2017 voted in support of Trump’s deficit-bloating tax cut bill.
“Republican policies past and present that have played starring roles in generating federal red ink got a free pass,” Extra! (3/11) noted in 2011.
It’s not as if this weren’t predictable. Groups like FAIR (3/15/11, 8/14/12) and economists like Paul Krugman (New York Times, 4/6/11) and Dean Baker (Truthout, 8/13/12), among others, time and again during the early Obama years insisted the Republicans’ “deficit hawk” posture was little more than a marketing gimmick to justify cutting programs for the poor and transferring money to the wealthy. And now that these same “deficit hawks” have a Republican president and control over both houses of Congress, their concern with “balancing the budgets” vanishes into thin air. Because the concern never existed; it was one part racist dog whistle, one part transparent moral framework for greed.
Shouldn’t the many journalists who served as message-carriers for Republicans’ claims that the deficit was an urgent issue that they cared about in earnest apologize for being taken in? And wouldn’t a healthy media examine how much they helped push this line without question now that we know how bogus it was to begin with?
‘And wouldn’t a healthy media examine how much they helped push this line without question now that we know how bogus it was to begin with?’
Yes it would. But we don’t have a healthy media. We have media owned by the .01%. The media are serving their masters very well. Their purpose is not to inform us. It is to make us conform.
Keynesian economics is bad until defense spending is threatened and then every military base in every congressional district is a wellspring of economic benefit. Deficits are bad, unless they are good; which is to say, when they transfer wealth upwards and trigger automatic spending cuts in social programs (but of course that can’t be acknowledged ).
Any point of view that can be bent to serve the hidden agenda of making ultra rich people even richer will be employed without regard for intellectual integrity or honesty.
Although this post is perceptive, as indeed all of FAIR’s work is, the goal of reforming the mainstream media can beneficially be abandoned. Time and energy can instead be expended on building new and improving existing alternative media.
The mainstream media ain’t gonna change; they are working as intended.
The real activity of power is not making people conform to what they don’t want, the real activity of power is making them want it.
Of course, “a healthy media” wouldn’t have pimped this piss in the first place
And collective amnesia will again set in when lifeline social programs are guillotined in the name of “fiscal responsibility”, won’t it just?
I think it was Dick Cheney who said deficits don’t matter. This is precisely why. Pay for the handout to the already wealthy with cuts in the future to government services; when the budget again faces deficit crises.
I learned some from this book years ago: http://www.jamesrobertson.com/book/futuremoneybook.pdf .
Robertson contends that we need to move away from having banks make money as for profit debt, and toward a money system which makes money available as a public good free of debt.
Perhaps we need a fuller discussion of how money is currently made. Only if you avoid this discussion can you imagine deficits to be aberrant, because functioning in the current money system entails debt.
What is it? Is it lack of imagination as to what will happen twenty years from now when millions of Americans are forced into poverty or into the US Army? What is the Good that they expect to come about as a result of this law? I expect to see Paul Ryan eaten from the inside by guilt and regret. Just kidding.
We have to support truly independent news organizations (a la Propublica) and starve out the others.
A FAIR assessment but waiting for change in this area is futile. Citizens may wish for non partisan reporting but it does not and b=never has been anywhere near the norm. Today, we look back at the publication of the Pentagon Papers and ignore the overwhelming support for the VN debacle that preceded it. Nothing new really, but nothing good either.
”Deficits don’t matter” – Richard Cheney. Cheney we’ve come to know as a another morally bankrupt Republican, should be used by Democrats in a national message campaign to showcase not simply ‘the stunning hypocrisy’ of the GOP but, it’s rueful disdain for governing in the best interests of American society. Progressives should reach out to the likes of Mike Lofgren and Bruce Bartlett, to have serious minded conservatives speaking against the GOP – and the planned destruction of New Deal programs. The republic is in serious trouble. Why not team up with the patriotic people from the right, whom, by virtue of their decades of government experience; have the credibility to spotlight the astonishing vehicles of corruption extremist forces of the right are employing to kill representative government? Ryan during an interview said of the positive affects the new tax laws will have on the economy, “We know these things happen when the tax burden is lessened on corporations,” also said moments later when asked about the tax bill being deficit neutral. “We can’t see into the future to know if that will be the case.” Its as if the adrenaline rush from passing his scheme provides license to contradict himself and fellow party members to a national audience and expect the electorate to fully acquiesce. Ryan is not, and never has been a wonk. He’s a far right ideologue with visions of granduer with a mindset to choke off funding of agencies critical to the human beings residing in these United States. And we damn well need to stop him and the GOP from achieving their sinister end game.
Another excellent, trenchant post by AJ! This political scam needs to be revealed REPEATEDLY, because it’s all too common — the conservatives (Republicans especially) know that many of their basic political tenets are not that popular WHEN THE DETAILS & TRADE-OFFS ARE EXPLAINED in a strait forward manner, so they rely on the political laziness/short-memory of most of the general public, the fact that they can often cow the commercial MSM press with their influential ‘managerial powers’ (i.e.; they go golfing/sailing with the reporter’s boss, or some other cronyistic activity) to just do the ‘he-said/she-said’ reporting WITHOUT any larger context, and diversionary emotional issues (i.e.; God, guns, guts, abortion, etc)
Similarly with things like Social Security supposedly ‘going broke’. It’s grossly exaggerated, the small shortfalls that would happen in 20 or 30 yrs could EASILY be overcome by MINOR Social Security tax increases (1 or 2%) or more progressively, a removal of the cap on income taxable for SS (see economist Dean Baker’s coverage of this topic). Even more basically – – – when the hell did Republicans ever REALLY care about what’s going to happen to a social-welfare program in 20 or 30 yrs, when they’re constantly trying to kill most of these programs TODAY, often by appointing ‘destructive managers’ to regulatory agencies. But all of a sudden they’re all so SOOoooo concerned about ‘fiscal health’ when it comes to these programs, though they sign anti-tax-increase pledges that obviate the possibility of accomplishing that exact thing.
The only thing I would add to this post would be the fact that unfortunately this tactic didn’t start in the last 5 or 10 yrs — this goes back probably to the inception of this country, but definitely kicked into high gear during ‘St Ronnie’s’ terms back in the 1980’s.
This is half an article, albeit half of a good one. Whenever the GOP runs up the annual deficit and the overall federal debt, the Democrats then run on fiscal austerity. They seize the political opportunity to mock the Republicans’ hypocrisy, posture as the “adults in the room,” take office and then do things like “reform” welfare spending, or even offer a Grand Bargain on Medicare and Social Security. The Obama Administration wound up with about a third of the stimulus we actually needed and almost immediately pivoted to deficit reduction for absolutely no good reason. The Republicans may be hypocrites, but unfortunately the Democrats appear to be actual budget hawks, which is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s the neoliberal two-step. The GOP takes office, moves the goalposts, then the Dems take office and legitimate the ratchet click. See especially surveillance and war powers, but the budget too. They’re at it again, by the way. Just watch as #resistance winds up meaning #austerity. Kudos to Adam for calling out media hypocrisy and lack of accountability at this moment, and it would be great to pick out a couple of the worst offenders and really hammer them to apologize. But in the bigger picture isn’t just about the Republicans. Ever to the right. Never to the left.
Thirdway must be happy with how their democrats are performing.
I must be getting old. This phenomenon started with Reagan and using Jude Waninski’s “2 Santa Claus” theory . I thought that was exceedingly obvious.
Same same for democrats. When Clinton left office the national debt was $5 trillion and the budget was functionally balanced. Bush, mostly through the disastrous wars in the middle east, doubled the debt to $10 Trillion and had a $375 Bn a year structural deficit. Obama, mostly through bailing out the banks and continuing all the wars in the middle east, doubled the debt again from $10 Trillion to $20 Trillion and had a structural annual deficit of about $500 Bn a year. So when the author tries to limit this discussion to Republicans he is engaging in sophistry. In absolute numbers Obama was wore than Bush concerning the deficit (Obama raised it by $10 Tr compared to Bush’s $5 Tr). Neither of them nor any of the people sill in the Senate and House of Representatives give a rip about the debt or the deficit. Most of them have been there since at least 2000 and voted for all the budgets that did this. The criminal part of it is the populace keeps reelecting them expecting change. Pretty stupid.