Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Liars? (Special Josh Bolten/New York Times as Enabler Edition)

I've gotten a note saying that I was unfair to New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum.

Perhaps, but on looking back at Rosenbaum's coverage of the midsession budget review, I think not.

Let's begin our story on July 13, 2004, when non-partisan budget expert Stan Collender writes about the midsession budget review on nationaljournal.com:

Budget Battles (07/13/2004): At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling.

Don't believe them.

OMB is likely to say its latest projection shows the fiscal 2004 deficit will be around $420 billion, about $100 billion less than the $521 billion the administration forecast when it released its budget in February. Administration officials will say this is an indication of how much better the budget outlook has gotten over the past few months and that the president's policies are working.... The administration... won't say that the "improvement" is due to what now must be taken as a consistent pattern of questionable projections and forecasts.

Last year's midsession review projected a fiscal 2003 deficit of $455 billion. A mere 10 weeks later, when the actual number turned out to be $80 billion less, the White House claimed the lower number was because of the president's economic program and sound management. The truth, however, is that the "improvement" was mostly due to the unrealistically high forecast.... This forecasting was politically motivated or just plain bad, and the characterization of it as an improvement was nothing more than spin....

The key to understanding what is really going on will be to look at the midsession review itself -- it will be posted on the OMB Web site -- rather than listening to or reading the administration's statements, which are very likely to give a false impression.... After all, the White House could have projected an $800 billion hole in February and then said it had cut the deficit in half...

Stan Collender was far from the only person pointing out that last January the Bush administration continued its uninterrupted four-year record of lying about its budget by highballing the current fiscal year's deficit estimate. So it was very disappointing to me to see the New York Times's coverage of the midsession review when it was issued begin with:

New York Times: The White House projected on Friday that the budget deficit would reach $445 billion in this fiscal year. That would make it by far the largest shortfall ever in the dollar amount, though it would be well below the record for a deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product and well below the amount forecast six months ago. Joshua B. Bolten, President Bush's budget director, presented the new forecast as good news, saying "the improved budget outlook is the direct result of the strong economic growth the president's tax relief has fueled."

But Democrats said the revised forecast for the 2004 fiscal year, still almost 20 percent higher than the record $375 billion deficit in the previous year, showed just how much the government's fiscal health had deteriorated under Mr. Bush. "They're claiming improvement?" said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "That is utterly preposterous."

In the 2001 fiscal year, the last time the budget was prepared by the Clinton administration, there was a surplus of $127 billion. Soon after Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, his staff projected a 2004 surplus of $262 billion. In early February, the White House predicted that the deficit in this fiscal year would be $521 billion. The lower number announced on Friday in what is called the mid-session review resulted from larger tax receipts than had been expected. Mr. Bolten said that was a consequence of "the broad-based and sustained economic recovery."...

Note what the New York Times doesn't say. It doesn't say that "the improvement in the forecast was due to a highballed overestimate of the deficit made in the previous forecast of six months ago"; it doesn't say that "Mr. Bolten's statement made no sense because the effects of George W. Bush's tax policies on growth were already included in the forecast made six months ago and cannot be responsible for the change in the forecast"; it doesn't say that "economic growth since January 2004 has been no faster than was forecast back then, so Mr. Bolten is incorrect to say that higher tax receipts than forecast are the result of faster growth"; it doesn't say that "Mr. Bolten's spurious claims of 'improvement' were simply the latest in what budget expert Stan Collender has called 'a consistent pattern of questionable projections and forecasts.'"

What the Times article does do is to turn the story into a match of dueling quotes, of "he said--he said" with the author providing insufficient clues for a reader not intimately familiar with the budget and its forecasts to figure out who is telling the story straight and who is spouting partisan garbage.

And so game and set to Josh Bolten. Bolten has accomplished his mission: he has gotten his meme that the deficit outlook is improving because of George W. Bush's policies out into the stream of public discourse about the budget. And the New York Times has cooperated with him: it has printed Bolten's statements, and done so without surrounding them with the appropriate context to allow readers to make an informed judgment of their veracity.