Budget

All this week CNN has been taking a look at “Broken Government” and in some cases the cable channel deviated from the mainstream media norm by providing a critical view of government.That was the case on Feb. 23 when Wolf Blitzer and Lisa Sylvester scrutinized lavish pension-plan and retirement-packages for government officials during “The Situation Room.” “Many Americans will spend half a…

Americans have been so bombarded with the word "crisis," it appears to have lost all meaning. But according to a distinguished scholar at the Cato Institute, there is a real, serious crisis pending in America's addiction to entitlement programs, government-dependence, and imaginary "rights" to live off future generations. "You will have to look into the future, do the responsible thing, and…

Hosting Sunday’s This Week on ABC, Terry Moran noted during the past week the Obama administration “fanned out across the country” to trumpet how “the stimulus worked,” yet President Obama “sounded a little frustrated that people don't get it” as, Moran fretted: “What did they do wrong? They're playing defense on what was one of their major accomplishments.”Earlier in his interview with…

When this arrived at my e-mail inbox Sunday, I thought a usually reliable tipster was playing a joke on me.But after reviewing the video and transcript of this morning's "Reliable Sources" on CNN, it's become apparent that Howard Kurtz really did ask two of his guests if the press is currently going soft on the Republican Party."Every day, every week the media -- and that includes this program…

David Leonhardt, who serves as the New York Times's conscience on economics issues as a columnist and reporter, celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Obama "stimulus" on the front page of Wednesday's Business section, while attacking naysayers as "hard-core skeptics" and pushing for yet another "stimulus": "Success of Stimulus Bill Is Noteworthy as Another Is Weighed." Leonhardt's column…

In his report ("Federal deficit at $430.69 billion through January") following yesterday's snow-delayed release of Uncle Sam's most recent Monthly Treasury Statement, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger informed readers that through the first four months of the fiscal year, "outlays total $1.12 trillion, down 3.9 percent from the spending through the same period in 2009." He further…

On the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration's “stimulus” spending bill, ABC, CBS and NBC all eagerly corroborated the White House's claims about how it “saved or created” many jobs and staved off economic disaster, though they all offered a range of numbers and definitions (ABC: “800,000 to 2.4 million new jobs,” CBS: “about 1.8 million” jobs “saved or created” and NBC: “1.6 to 1.8…

New York Times budget reporter Jackie Calmes's lead story Wednesday, "Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear Of A Debt Crisis -- Arising Fiscal Alarm -- Obama Convenes Panel to Find Answers as Positions Harden." Following her usual pattern, Calmes managed to blame Bush and Republicans instead of the man who has been president for over a year. Calmes also repeated popular Democrat-friendly talking points,…

On a low-attention Sunday, the Associated Press's Tom Raum put together a pretty good analysis ("US debt will keep growing even with recovery"), though not labeled as such, of the serious financial situation the country faces thanks to the mushrooming national debt. But the AP writer ignored two critical warnings raised in a related item he filed over a year ago on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 ("…

CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday demonstrated just how ignorant most media members are of how the federal budget works.During the most recent installment of "Fareed Zakaria GPS," the host actually said, "[T]he Bush tax cuts are the single largest part of the black hole that is the federal budget deficit."Before we examine the staggering stupidity on display here, let's first look at exactly what…

Press reports about the prediction by President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers that the economy would add an average of 95,000 jobs per month during calendar 2010 weren't exactly overflowing with praise, but were lacking in something one would have expected: historical context. Philip Elliott's Associated Press report provided none. Sewell Chan's New York Times coverage at least pointed…

Two think tanks, the Tax Policy Center and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), have done something the New York Times, the Associated Press, and other supposed leading lights of establishment media journalism should have done days ago. As described in a Wall Street Journal editorial today, those two organizations have caught the Obama administration playing with the federal…

On a nightly basis, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann pompously presents himself as being the smartest guy in the room as he belittles every leading Republican in the nation.But on Tuesday, the "Countdown" host exhibited a staggering level of ignorance as he claimed "federal budget debt" -- whatever that is! -- as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is "about the same as it was in 1970," and "far less…

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag and Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf have a problem: They can't revise their budget estimates quickly enough to account for the continued bad news about tax collections arriving daily from the Treasury Department. Luckily for them, but unfortunately for taxpayers, an establishment media obsessed with PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome), TDS…