Shortly after the election, the MSM quickly turned from the presidential horse race to the “fiscal cliff.” And soon, news outlets began passing along what has become conventional political wisdom in the Beltway—that something must be done about the deficit, and fast, and that cutting entitlements, namely Social Security and Medicare, must be part of any deficit-reduction package. Hardly a day goes by when someone paying attention would not hear this meme repeated in the press. What they usually don’t hear enough of, though, is how contemplated cuts might affect ordinary people and what the alternatives might be.
The NewsHour weighed in two days after the election with an interview featuring Mark Bertolini, Aetna’s CEO, who told Judy Woodruff that going off the fiscal cliff would result in negative GDP the first quarter. After some talk about how Aetna is “gating” its investments and “pulling back on employment” as a result of fiscal-cliff uncertainty, Bertolini said, “No matter how you do the arithmetic, we have to raise revenue and we have to deal with entitlement programs.” There were no other guests on this show, so Bertolini pretty much had his say, with viewers getting the impression fixing the deficit and cutting entitlements were urgent.
Bertolini is one of the early organizers of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a group set up by Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming senator, and Erskine Bowles, the former Clinton chief of staff, who together headed the president’s deficit commission and authored the Simpson-Bowles report—policy prescriptions for cutting the deficit and entitlements. CEOs have been making the media rounds, delivering their urgent message, as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein did when he told CBS that people have to lower their expectations about entitlements, because “they’re not going to get them.” No pushback followed from the CBS anchor, Scott Pelley.
Meanwhile The Washington Post, which has helped shape elite media coverage on the deficit and entitlements, continued a vein of reporting that at times seems to blur the distinction between news and op-eds. The Post’s Lori Montgomery and her colleague Zachary Goldfarb gave a sense of urgency to fixing the deficit writing: “With another dangerous deadline for the economy approaching, Tuesday’s election returned to power the same men who have battled for two years over the nation’s budget problems.” That was a straightforward piece, but a few days later, Montgomery lionized Simpson and Bowles, who two years ago, she wrote, “rolled out a startling plan to dig the nation out of debt.” Even though lawmakers recoiled from the blunt prescriptions, she continued, “their plan as been heralded by both parties as a model of clear-eyed sacrifice, and policy makers say the moment has come to live up to its promise.” The press often refers to the Simpson-Bowles plan as a blueprint or a starting point for fixing the deficit and entitlements, as do many of the sources they choose to consult. Bertolini, for example, told Woodruff that “the Simpson-Bowles framework is perfect to build off of.”
Speaking of sourcing, Politico weighed in this week with a meme-building “Behind the Curtain” column. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported on the “clear takeaway” they said they heard in private and other conversations about what the economy needs, with “top lawmakers, officials, their senior aides and the CEOs who advise and lobby all of them.”
This is a group, it should be noticed, particularly quick to agree with policies that devolve to its own self-interest. And as Jonathan Chait notes in a withering piece in New York magazine’s Daily Intel section,
“Even more remarkable is the approach Politico’s editors take toward the consensus. They have on their hands the most ripe material for a scathing exposé of a chummy, self-interested business-political elite. VandeHei and Allen, by contrast, understand their role here not as exposing the insider nexus but as uncritically transmitting its point of view.
And for entitlements, that point of view is: shrink ‘em.
Trudy, fine bit of work but it suffers from the same problem I mentioned here:
http://www.cjr.org/swing_states_project/why_the_fiscal_cliff_needs_better_insider_reporting.php#comments
"First Principles!"
You need to emphasize the fact that the "fiscal cliff" is a deficit reduction problem which is scaring certain people because raising taxes and cutting the military is economically contractionary. The fiscal cliff reduces the deficit.
But the people who claim the deficit should be reduced don't want to reduce it in that way. They want to shift the contractions to 'entitlements'. That is why they are mixing deficit language and fiscal cliff language in their meme making.
They want people confused and off balance by this complex crisis which is 'so hard to explain' but 'something must be done'. Cutting social security and medicare is something (not to borrow a line from krugman) This is a shock doctrine tactic.
You need to explain that the fiscal cliff could be fixed tomorrow - pass the Clinton taxes on the rich and cancel the sequester - if the conservatives (in both parties) wanted to. You need to explain that the only reason why entitlements are being out on the table is because conservatives won't agree to tax increases in general and want to hurt the democrats and the American people by forcing them to cut back on the New Deal instead of the military and tax expenditures for the rich.
And you gotta explain that if their justification for averting the fiscal cliff is that it reduces the deficit in a contractionary way, then the same justification can be applied MORESO to entitlement cuts.
You have one party, supported by the business elite, that is demanding the sacrifice of the firstborn. They are using the fiscal cliff - and will use the debt ceiling - to cut back the state in a recession. Medicare and Social Security sacrifices are being offered up in the hope to appease the conservatives and disuade them from using the tools of government to take hostages and blow us all up.
NOBODYCARESABOUTTHEDEFICIT. It is a tool to beat back the state during more popular administrations which is put away and locked up when republicans act on behalf of the .001% percent. Nobody wants to reduce the deficit, they want to shift the burdens of a functioning society onto someone poorer.
Tell us about the fiscal cliff, about how it's an austerity program, and how in order to avoid the contractionary effects of an austerity program the elites are proposing an austerity program. We've got to make sense of this intentional complexity.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 02:39 PM
Interesting collection of fiscal cliff thought here:
http://billmoyers.com/category/fiscal-cliff-group-think/
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 12:43 AM
No, if you want to push a meme, it's important to get the details WRONG. See Simpson, Alan. Getting the details wrong creates chaff, and the impression that "oh, it's all political. there is nothing that is really objectively true." Because objectively, truthfully entitlement reform as proposed would have no appreciable effect on the deficit.
#3 Posted by jayackroyd, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 09:22 AM