politics

Rich Man, Poor Man

November 4, 2005

The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Weisman has a piece on the paper’s front page this morning that seems to obscure rather than delineate major parts of the purported deficit reduction package currently working its way through Congress.

Weisman first goes a little fuzzy in the fourth paragraph when he states that the bill “would shave payments to some farmers by 2.5 percent, while eliminating a major cotton support program and trimming agriculture conservation spending. A proposal to limit payments to rich farmers failed yesterday. The measure passed largely along party lines, with only two Democrats voting for it and five Republicans voting against it.” (Emphasis ours.)

“Rich farmers”?

How rich? Are we talking about Farmer Jones here, or the Del Monte Corp.? Weren’t there some specific numbers tied to this proposal? If so, why didn’t Weisman include them? What’s more, given the large-scale corporatization of the farming industry in this country, does this really mean that large, corporate-run farms are going to continue to receive government handouts?

According to the Associated Press, the answer is yes. Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was quoted by the AP as saying “We have a system where 10 percent of the farmers get 72 percent of the benefits.”

The AP goes on to say that “On average, 80 percent of producers received $2,163 apiece from the government last year, according to the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group that tracks Agriculture Department subsidy data. Payments to the other 20 percent averaged $34,187.” So, are these “other 20 percent” the rich farmers Weisman obliquely refers to? Seems so.

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As the Henderson Dispatch of Henderson, North Carolina (a paper which might know a thing or two about the farm industry) notes in an editorial, “Farm payments are intended to support small- and medium-sized operations that might be ruined by the harsh realities of farming … Mega-farms shouldn’t need that much help and the taxpaying public shouldn’t be giving it to them.”

But back to the Post, where Weisman isn’t done distorting by omission.

Down toward the middle of the piece, the Post buries a major part of the story — “a $70 billion tax cut that could come to a vote soon after the budget bill, more than wiping out the first bill’s deficit reduction.” (Emphasis ours.) With that, Weisman qualifies for the Buried Lede of the Week Award.

As Sam Rosenfeld noted on the American Prospect‘s “Tapped” blog this morning, “could it have hurt Jonathan Weisman to mention somewhere before the tenth paragraph of the piece (and less obliquely than in the passing reference he makes there) that there’s a second component to the reconciliation package that’s been artificially severed from the spending one, which will cut taxes for the wealthy by $70 billion? As Harry Reid and virtually every other Democrat has been saying ad infinitum during this debate: ‘While the majority has divided its budget in a way that obscures its overall effect, nobody should be fooled. Viewed as a whole, budget reconciliation would increase the deficit by more than $30 billion.'”

Given that, the Post‘s headline for the piece, “Senate Passes Plan to Cut $35 Billion From Deficit,” while technically correct, gives the reader precisely the wrong impression.

Someone forgot to warn the Post‘s copyeditors that the news — and the headline — were actually tucked into that tenth paragraph.

–Paul McLeary

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.