NY Times, LA Times uncritically reported Bush's misleading deficit claim

http://mediamatters.org/items/200701050001

Summary: Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported President Bush's claim that his administration had achieved its goal of cutting the 2004 budget deficit in half (as a percentage of gross domestic product) by 2009. But neither newspaper noted that the 2004 deficit figure Bush claims to have halved was a possibly inflated projection that the deficit never reached. When compared to the actual 2004 deficit, the 2006 shortfall remains above the halfway point.

January 4 articles in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported President Bush's claim in a January 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed that his administration had achieved its goal of cutting the 2004 budget deficit in half (as a percentage of gross domestic product) by 2009. But neither outlet noted that the 2004 deficit figure Bush claims to have halved is the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) projected shortfall from that year -- $521 billion, or 4.5 percent of GDP -- which greatly exceeded the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion, or 3.5 percent of GDP. When compared with the projected 2004 shortfall, the 2006 deficit of $248 billion, or 1.9 percent of GDP, is indeed less than half as large. But when compared to the actual 2004 deficit, the 2006 shortfall remains above the halfway point.

In January 2004, Bush vowed to "cut the deficit in half over the next five years" as a percentage of GDP. The White House pegged this pledge to the OMB's projected FY 2004 deficit, therefore making the goal a deficit of 2.25 percent of GDP or less by 2009. In the wake of this pledge, however, numerous economists noted that the OMB projection appeared to be severely inflated, making it much easier for Bush to meet his asserted goal. For instance, on February 3, 2004, The New York Times reported:

William Gale, a budget analyst at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush had implicitly made his deficit-reduction goal easier by projecting a surprisingly high budget deficit of $521 billion this year. Under the current budget plan, Mr. Bush can fulfill his deficit pledge even if the government has a shortfall of $237 billion in 2009. By contrast, the administration's budget plan last year proposed reducing the deficit to $190 billion by 2008.

Can we just disband the Republic Party? They've proved time and again they're good at nothing but lies.

But then Ford gave Nixon a full pardon and ended that dream.

Don

Just say NO to pardons!!

to press . . .

By obliterating a system that dispersed it ,a Balance Paid up Deficit.Thanks again Bill.

It took Bush three years to undo eight years of Clinton...

here, let me take a good situation, screw it up beyond belief, then use distorted statistics to sort of solve half the problem.

so we're left with a situation that's STILL screwed up beyond belief, and somehow there's something to give shrub "credit" for???

:wtf: