National Debt

Ed Schultz: ‘People Are Better Off Today Than They Were Four Years Ago’
By Curtis Houck | October 7, 2014 | 9:09 PM EDT

Ed Schultz used his opening monologue during his MSNBC show on Tuesday to paint Republicans as the “desperate” and “delusional” party in trouble ahead of the midterm elections and informed his audience that “people are better off today than they were four years ago” (before dismissing the struggling wages in the country as “a different thing”).

He began by dismissing the idea that Republicans are better positioned to gain ground in Congress following the midterm elections and strangely bashed The Washington Post and The New York Times for predicting GOP victories. He said The Washington Post was “trying to convince the world” that Republicans will succeed in November while the liberal New York Times apparently “doesn’t seem to get enough of it.”

PBS Promotes Obama's Claim Country Has Improved ‘By Every Economic Measure’; Lou Dobbs Proves Otherwise
By Curtis Houck | October 2, 2014 | 10:43 PM EDT

Following President Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday, the PBS NewsHour offered a 48-second news brief on the subject, in which co-anchor Gwen Ifill offered no opposing viewpoint to the President’s claim in his speech that “by every measure, the country is better off than when he took office.”

The show then played a soundbite of the President, in which he lamented that “millions of Americans don't yet feel enough of the benefits of a growing economy where it matters most, and that’s in their own lives and these truths aren't incompatible. Our broader economy, in the aggregate, has come a long way, but the gains of recovery are not yet broadly shared.”

Ron Fournier Summarizes Obama's 60 Minutes Interview: 'I, Me, My, It's Their Fault'
By Tom Blumer | September 28, 2014 | 11:10 PM EDT

National Journal’s Ron Fournier was apparently among those who endured President Obama's appearance on "60 Minutes" this evening.

Fournier was able to succinctly summarize the contents of Obama's interview with Steve Kroft, the network's designated softball pitcher, in a tweet appearing shortly after its conclusion (HT Twitchy):

PBS’s Ifill Fails to Ask Geithner About Admission That WH Asked Him to Lie on TV
By Paul Bremmer | May 23, 2014 | 12:10 PM EDT

On Thursday evening, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared on the PBS NewsHour to discuss his new memoir. Not only did the taxpayer-subsidized anchor Gwen Ifill gently press Geithner from the left on policy matters, she failed to ask him about one of his most startling admissions – that Obama administration officials wanted him to lie during appearances on the Sunday morning TV talk shows.

It's not for a lack of air time either. Ifill gave a two-minute introduction, followed by a 10-minute interview, yet she never got around to this revelation from Geithner’s book Stress Test:

AP: After Years of Touting It, Dems Told Not to Say 'Recovery'
By Tom Blumer | April 18, 2014 | 11:13 AM EDT

In a Friday morning dispatch which comes off more as a set of election instructions from "Democratic strategists" than as a real news report, David Espo at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wanted to make sure that political operatives who don't read boring pollster reports still get the message: Don't use the word "recovery" during your fall campaign.

In the course of his missive, Espo falsely claimed that economic growth since the recession officially ended has continued unbroken, and failed to remind his audience that the party has trotted out "recovery" themes several times, only to see historically weak economic and employment results each time. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

MSNBC’s Bernstein (Purposely?) Confuses Budget Deficit with National Debt
By Paul Bremmer | April 17, 2014 | 10:35 AM EDT

MSNBC contributor Jared Bernstein pulled off a deft sleight-of-hand on Tuesday’s PoliticsNation. It started after host Al Sharpton played a clip of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calling for fiscal responsibility: “If Washington is serious about helping working families or serious about getting families out of work back to work, then it needs to get serious about our national debt. How do we do it? First we stop spending money we don't have.”

Bernstein, formerly Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist, blasted Ryan for being “wrong on the numbers” (even though Ryan didn’t cite any numbers in the clip). He claimed:

In Covering House's Passage of Ryan Budget, AP's Taylor Presumes $600B Annual Deficits Are 'Sustainable'
By Tom Blumer | April 15, 2014 | 11:55 AM EDT

Monday afternoon at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Andrew Taylor predictably described the House's passage of the Ryan Budget in shrill terms (in order of appearance): "A slashing budget blueprint"; "Sweeping budget cuts"; balances the budget "at the expense of poor people and seniors"; "sharp cuts to domestic programs"; "staking out a hard line for the future"; and "tough cuts." Naturally, he failed to disclose that the Ryan budget increases the federal government's total outlays in each and every fiscal year from 2015 to 2024, with the final projected year coming in at $4.995 trillion, or 42 percent above the $3.523 trillion in spending the Congressional Budget Office predicted yesterday for fiscal 2014.

In the process of performing the AP's usual hatchet job, Taylor let loose with a howler about the federal government's ability to continue on its current financial path. The AP reporter may also have inadvertently let something slip into his narrative about the viability of a cherished government program, something which is a deep, dark secret to most Americans, but is quite well-known to those who watch things more closely:

AP's Rugaber: Continued Large Deficits Signify 'Improvement in the Nation's Finances'
By Tom Blumer | April 14, 2014 | 11:56 PM EDT

On Thursday, Christopher Rugaber's assignment at the Associated Press was to cover that day's release of Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement for March.

If the AP economics writer had limited the scope of his coverage to the statement itself, his coverage would have been passed muster. But, as he and his AP colleagues so often do, Rugaber felt it was duty to offer what he must have thought was helpful analysis. He wrote that March's reported $37 billion deficit, an admitted significant improvement over the March 2013 result, even after adjusting for timing differences in end-of-month receipts and outlays, was "the latest sign of improvement in the nation's finances." The last time I checked, running significantly in the red is not an improvement. It really signifies less rapid deterioration, especially since fiscal 2014 in full is still expected to end with deficit of over $500 billion.

Andrea Mitchell Plots Dem Strategy: 'Many of Us in the Media' Touted More Spending
By Scott Whitlock | February 21, 2014 | 5:55 PM EST

 

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Friday openly plotted strategy with a senior Democratic adviser, complimenting him on successful efforts to convince Americans think that raising the debt ceiling wasn't "running up the credit card." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Mitchell talked to Doug Hattaway, a member of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. She praised, "You were one of the advisors to persuade the Democrats that for this round of the debt ceiling debate they had to re-frame it so that it wasn't the Democrats wanting to spend more money." Mitchell unselfconsciously continued, "As hard as many of us in the media tried to persuade people, this is money that's already been spent, we're just paying the bills."

Spit Take! WashPost Reports Obama to Call for 'End to the Era of Austerity' Known As His Presidency
By Tim Graham | February 21, 2014 | 9:03 AM EST

Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb caused spit takes in Washington on Friday morning. At the top left of the paper, the headline is "Obama budget to rebuff austerity." Or, as Goldfarb described the new White House budget document, "Obama will call for an an end to the era of austerity that has dogged his presidency..."

Is there nobody at the Post who can properly understand that the largest deficits in American history have occurred in the past five years? This was quickly mocked on Twitter:

MSNBC Republican: ‘Grown-up’ Boehner ‘Deserves a Medal of Freedom’ For Debt Ceiling Surrender
By Paul Bremmer | February 18, 2014 | 3:42 PM EST

Now for a dose of MSNBC-style conservatism from Nicolle Wallace, a frequent network contributor and former White House communications director under George W. Bush. On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Wallace trashed Tea Party members and other conservative Republicans as children while praising House Speaker John Boehner and his moderate ilk as the “grown-ups” of the party.

During a discussion about Republicans gearing up for the midterm elections, Wallace praised Boehner for caving in on the debt ceiling earlier this month:

HuffPost Blogger Rips GOP For Opposing Debt Limit Hike; Leaves Out Then-Sen. Obama's Similar Stand
By Paul Bremmer | February 13, 2014 | 6:16 PM EST

There was some huffing at the Huffington Post on Wednesday over House Republicans’ reluctance to pass a clean debt limit increase. Contributing writer Mitchell Bard was glad that the increase was passed, but he was incensed that the vast majority of GOP congressmen (201 of 229) voted against it. He took out his frustrations in a post titled, “Lesson From the House Debt Ceiling Vote: The GOP Is the Tea Party.”

Bard railed against those 201 Republicans: “Voting against the debt ceiling isn't ‘conservative’; it's reckless, ideological, irresponsible and not something anyone charged with governing the nation should consider.” Following that logic, Barack Obama was reckless, ideological, and irresponsible in 2006 when, as a senator, he voted against a debt limit increase.