NYT D.C. Bureau: still yearning for moderation and compromise

The reporters make the assumption that the GOP proposal to privatize Medicare was an effort to address “the nation’s long-term fiscal problems,” ignoring evidence from the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere that the plan simply sought to shift the financial burden to those needing medical care, not doing anything to improve care or control costs. This framing is only possible when the starting point is, “We all understand that Medicare recipients need to make do with less.”

People can and do disagree about whether privatizing Medicare makes any sense, but there is no disagreement about the fact that the proposal would privatize the system. The GOP learned several years ago — in its last attempt to privatize Social Security — that it was best to avoid the word “privatize.” But the fact that one side in a debate has made a tactical decision to avoid describing its plan accurately doesn’t mean that reporters should follow that lead.

One might think that there was overwhelming public demand that strong measures be taken to counterbalance an increase to the debt-limit. The reporter knows very well that this is not so, and should know that polling on this issue — as with highly general questions on spending — fail to engage respondents as to the consequences of the choices involved. Does the reference to the “potency of the issue” reflect the functioning of the Washington echo chamber, or simply a personal view that the issue should have potency?

This conceit — the proposal just popped up in my story; I exercised no agency, but only recognized that the proposal was demanding to be talked about — is a frequent one. Is there overwhelming support for it? There is no evidence of that, and, indeed, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee said he was “strongly opposed.” The key is that anything that has at least one Democratic and one Republican on board gets to be called “bipartisan,” the ticket to be treated as important given the mindset of the Washington Bureau.

Would the psychoanalysts describe this statement as projection or something else? It is entirely made up. There is simply no evidence that passing a clean increase in the debt ceiling — as has been effected many times in the past — would be “unpalatable” to voters. There are surely many Republican voters who might prefer cutting spending concurrently (and some Democrats and independents as well), but that is a far cry from presenting the satisfaction of that portion of the electorate as an unavoidable necessity of American political life. It might help if there were ever some recognition of circumstances where “balance” represented the wrong policy choice.

The unwillingness to say “privatize,” even though the word most succinctly describes the plan.

Why ignore evidence and just report this as though it were a partisan rhetoric that had no more or less truth value than any other political statement? By the time this article was reported, it was quite clear that the plan was set up so that in fact the amount that would go to seniors to purchase private insurance would not keep up with rising health care costs.

Poll after poll conducted by the Times itself has shown that debt reduction is far down on the list of public concerns; the issue is that elite opinion in Washington — which the reporters imbibe, reflect, and help shape — has decided that immediate debt reduction is important.

This is an accurate characterization.

Were the two votes really equivalent? See highlighted text below, and compare the highlighted sections of the previous day’s story (to the right).

Here’s the tip-off to the problem. The sixty votes refers to the number of votes under Senate rules required to cut-off debate. Without 60 votes, opponents of a measure can filibuster it, and, since the Democratic majority has been unwilling to put Republicans to the test of actually carrying out a real filibuster, 41 Senators are effectively able to filibuster by shorthand. What disappears in the story is what a majority of the body wishes to do. That is a relevant fact to readers and voters, not esoterica.

True, but not because a majority of Senators opposed the proposal.

The premise is that the only threshold to be reported on is whether cloture is achieved, and so bills with majority support are covered the same way as bills that do not.

Only here does it become plain that the proposal to end the tax breaks had an absolute majority (with a little room to spare), and that the proposal to expand oil and gas drilling not only fell 18 votes short of the cloture requirement, but eight votes short of having the support of a majority.

An assumption built into most political reporting: that, fundamentally, there has been an economic recovery in process, one that would be sustainable if unfortunate events didn’t keep on conspiring to knock the economy off balance. Recovery for whom, and at what cost? Entirely ignored are the facts that: (a) the financial system may be less stable and, given the absence of serious reforms, remain more vulnerable that it appears; and (b) there remain many millions of citizens for whom there has been no recovery at all.

Because that which is termed bipartisan is deemed to be good, the actual news is not explored: if there hadn’t been a lot of tension in the talks already, one side must have been asleep at the wheel (and Republicans have been very clear about what they want).

It isn’t clear the person or interests for whom the “new urgency” exists. The unstated premise is that the only way to get to an increase in the debt limit is to get along with some significant cuts. That may be the White House view, but it does represent a departure from the process employed for previous raises in the debt limit. The possibility that some could find it urgent to state clearly that an a debt limit increase will not be held hostage is not explored.

This might also have been coded in yellow. Dismissed from the conversation (and the article) is the argument that there should be spending increases but no tax cuts at all.

Serving both parties characteristically, as here, is seen to provide a badge of authority, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Zandi, to put it mildly, has not demonstrated a stellar record of providing accurate predictions, let alone penetrating insights.

This might also have been coded in yellow or blue. First, the “balanced” approach is seen as exemplified by someone who both dismisses the possibility that less-than-maximally aggressive spending cuts could be counterproductive and rejects spending increases. In other words, a “reasonable” cutter who opposes stimulus. Second, Holtz-Eakin’s view is juxtaposed to those who suggest more stimulus, without any discussion of the evidence supporting either position.