Budget

PBS recently responded to accusations of a liberal slant to its July 23 Need to Know program which featured satirist Andy Borowitz making fun of Sarah Palin’s intelligence as the show's executive director Shelley Lewis claimed that, because the previous week's episode had featured a segment that was critical of President Obama, the program in reality has been balanced in going after political…

It would appear that someone at CNBC listened to the Mark Levin Show on Thursday. Either that, or someone at the network paid attention to his or her e-mail alerts and read my post that went up in the wee hours Friday morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Likely in response to our criticisms, CNBC has revised and "clarified" a report by CNBC staff writer Jeffrey Cox. The network's revised and…

CNBC.com's Jeff Cox needs to brush up on his financial history. He believes that George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts affected only the highest-earning taxpayers, i.e., those who gross $250,000 a year of more. He's wrong. Here's part of what Cox posted this morning (erroneous statement is bolded; HT to Mark Levin in his Thursday broadcast): Letting Bush Tax Cuts Die Would Kill Recovery:…

Chris Matthews on Monday got a much-needed lesson from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) on how tax hikes impact the budget as well as the economy."Congressman Ryan, is there any tax role for reducing our $1.4 trillion to $1.7 trillion debt this year -- deficit this year?" Matthews asked during the 5PM installment of MSNBC's "Hardball." "Is there any role in tax increasing to help do that job?"When Ryan…

Here's the White House's latest deficit projection, as illustrated at the Corner (HT Instapundit): As explained in two previous NB posts (here and here), FY 2010 is worse than it appears by about $115 billion.This is why, as explained previously:

It is rare that the network news media expose President Barack Obama's hypocrisy on any point, which is why Mark Knoller's CBS story on July 22 was so enlightening. Covering Obama's July 22 signing of a bill "restoring" jobless benefits to roughly 2.5 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks, Knoller wrote that Obama "changes tune on paying for unemployment…

The New York Times today touted two polls that supposedly demonstrate support for the Democratic position on unemployment benefits. But a further examination of the poll questions reveals that their findings were inaccurate; the questions misrepresented the issues at play, and the Republican position on the matter."Two national polls published last week suggest that most Americans are on […

UPDATE, JULY 18: This post was based in an Associated Press's quote of a statement President Obama made to NBC News that "my policies ... got us out of this mess." Subsequent review of the video and transcript of that interview shows that the President really said "my policies ... are getting us out of this mess." I have prepared a follow-up post dealing with this matter and a separate…

It's bad enough the federal government's official budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for the second year in a row, according to the just-released June 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement. But, focusing only on receipts for the moment, a closer look makes it obvious that the situation is even worse than it appears. Don't expect the establishment press to take any interest in the annoying but…

An outraged electorate has just handed Japan's ruling party its hat in elections for half of the seats in the upper house of that country's parliament in a direct reversal of election results from a year ago. Opposition parties made major gains. The results constitute a resounding rejection of a massive value-added tax increase proposed by a guy whose immediate predecessor of the same party…

Channeling her inner Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow on Sunday actually said extending unemployment benefits is "the most stimulative thing you can do" to help the ailing economy.Appearing on the panel discussion of NBC's "Meet the Press," Maddow boldly presented a liberal view of economics that only the current House Speaker would be proud of."I think that most Americans also, though, understand the…

While some on the left side of the aisle in Congress are getting all starry-eyed about prospects of more federal stimulus spending, the first round of stimulus under President Barack Obama may have done even less to help the ailing economy than supporters claim. On MSNBC's July 9 broadcast of "The Daily Rundown," co-hosts Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie interviewed CNBC "Closing Bell" anchor…

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released its Monthly Budget Review for June. It estimated that June's deficit was "only" $69 billion, down from $94 billion last year, and that the deficit through nine months of the current fiscal year is $1.005 trillion, down from last year's $1.087 trillion. June's single-month improvement -- or more properly stated, its less disastrous result --…

West coast viewers got to see a July 4 CBS Evening News on Sunday, and those who tuned in saw CBS's interim "report card" on Congress's performance so far. Under the headline of "unfinished business," correspondent Wyatt Andrews and his sole expert, Politico's Jonathan Allen, both fretted how Congress is now "paralyzed" due to a "growing fear of the deficit."Many Americans are probably wishing…