Media Matters (2/24/09) catches AP reporter Liz Sidoti garbling Barack Obama’s position on entitlements:
He called the long-term solvency of Social Security “the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far” and said reforming healthcare, including burgeoning entitlement programs, was a huge priority.
What Obama actually said was:
In the coming years, we’ll be forced to make more tough choices and do much more to address our long-term challenges, from the rising cost of healthcare that Peter [Orszag, Office of Management and Budget director] described, which is the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far, to the long-term solvency of Social Security.
In other words, healthcare is by far the single most pressing fiscal challenge–not Social Security.
What’s surprising is not that a reporter would misunderstand a speech–Obama’s phrasing could be a little bit confusing, I guess–but that anyone who follows politics for a living wouldn’t know that healthcare is a bigger problem than Social Security. Maybe they should pay less attention to corporate media.
I heard the exact same quote from Cokie Roberts and Steve Inskip on NPR the other morning. I commented on their website about it. Little did I know they were just recycling AP garbage. Thanks!