New WashPost Poll Again Omits Senate Democrats As Potential Culprits in Economic Mess

March 13th, 2013 6:09 PM

Back in February, I noted the Washington Post’s egregious omission of Senate Democrats as a category in a poll gauging the blame game if sequestration went into effect.  Sequestration was an initiative spearheaded by the Obama White House, which is part of the story that has many on the left ripping liberal journalism icon Bob Woodward for reporting.  Well, what do you know, in a new poll, the Post once again decided to leave the Democratic-run Senate off the hook, failing to ask respondents what they think about Senate Dems' handling of economic policy.

This is incredibly odd as it’s been way over 1,000 days since the Senate has presented, much less acted on a budget, something the liberal media would have ceaselessly hammered Republicans for had they been in control of the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress and done the same.

As Ed Morrissey wrote last month:

…if the Senate had followed the law and produced normal-order budgets, we wouldn’t have the sequestration at all. The budget resolutions of both chambers would have gone to conference committee, which would have hashed out the differences.  Obama would have signed the budgets, and we would have avoided nearly four years of crisis funding for the federal government.  Reid and Obama haven’t used normal order because they want to keep using continuing resolutions as a means to keep the inflated FY2010 spending levels as the baseline going forward, and especially because they want to keep House Republicans from having a real voice on spending and budgeting.


However, one interesting find in this new Post poll is the fact that the president and Congressional Republicans are tied concerning the public trust on cutting government spending.

Another is the fact that 73 percent have felt no impact from the sequestration cuts.  These numbers probably explain this email from the president's  Organizing For Action group -- basically his campaign apparatus living on in perpetuity as a PAC --  which details these cuts as an apocalypse on American society: 

Friend --

Thanks to Republican obstructionism in Congress, the nation was forced into the sequester last Friday -- a series of automatic and destructive budgets cuts that you and your neighbors are just beginning to feel.

In the face of these devastating cuts, House Speaker John Boehner went on TV and said, "I don't know whether it's going to hurt the economy or not ... I don't think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work."

Really? We're not talking about some abstract numbers on a piece of paper -- this is real.

The sequester will cut 10,000 teaching jobs, 70,000 spots for preschoolers in Head Start, $43 million for food programs for seniors, $35 million for local fire departments, and access to nutrition assistance for over half a million women and their families.

And the reason congressional Republicans let these cuts go into effect is because they simply wouldn't support closing tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires -- for things like yachts and corporate jets. I wish I were kidding.

More than 340,000 OFA supporters have added their names to support President Obama's balanced plan and call on congressional Republicans to take action to stop the sequester budget cuts right now.