CNN’s New Executive VP Argued Not Raising Taxes Hikes Deficit: ‘Republican Numbers Do Not Add Up’
In picking Mark Whitaker, Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News, as its new Executive Vice President and Managing Editor (TVNewser post), CNN has selected someone with a liberal outlook who presumes not raising taxes can be blamed for an increase in the deficit.
On election night last year, Whitaker channeled a liberal argument in favor of hiking taxes, declaring during live NBC News coverage: “The fact is right now the Republican numbers do not add up” since House Republicans want to roll back “spending to 2008 levels, which gets you about a $100 billion, but extending all the tax cuts. And the Congressional Budget Office has said that ends up adding $270 billion, at least, to the deficit.”
Earlier last year, in the midst of the Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod kerfuffle, Whitaker fretted on the NBC Nightly News over lies on the Internet:
Mark Twain said, a century ago, that a lie can get make its way half way around the world before the truth has its shoes on. That's just been intensified, both in term of the viral nature of these stories, but also, as we've seen, the potential to edit them and distort them before they get out there.
Before jumping to NBC News, Whitaker was the top editor at Newsweek from 1998 to 2006, where he was forced to retract a report in the magazine (a “lie”?) that a Koran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo, though he buried his mea culpa, as recounted in a 2005 MRC CyberAlert item:
Newsweek may have admitted Sunday that its sloppy reporting, about how a U.S. soldier at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet, led to riots in Afghanistan which killed at least 15 people, but they hardly made their concession prominent in the May 23 edition of the magazine, especially online where, on the magazine's home page, you'd have to guess that this headline, "The Islamic World: How a Fire Broke Out," had something to do with a retraction.
And to read Editor Mark Whitaker's message, you'd have to know to click on "Letters and Live Talk" in a left side column, then, under "More," choose "The Editors' Desk." And even then, whether online or in the hard copy, Whitaker didn't approach an apology until the last sentence of his last paragraph: "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
From the 1:00 AM EST hour on election night/Wednesday morning November 3, 2010:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We've heard guest after guest tonight, and winner after winner, saying we're going to go to Washington and cut spending. What's the problem with that?
MARK WHITAKER: Well, you know, we've been talking about the role of independents and independents, after the economy and after jobs, the thing that they really care about is the deficit and debt and the fact is right now the Republican numbers do not add up on this. The Pledge to America that Boehner and the Young Guns ran on basically calls for rolling back spending to 2008 levels, which gets you about a $100 billion, but extending all the tax cuts. And the Congressional Budget Office has said that ends up adding $270 billion, at least, to the deficit.
So, I think what we're going to see, starting with the press conference tomorrow that President Obama's going to give, is challenging the Republicans to say what are you going cut not only in terms of programs, but what else are you going to put on the table? Are you cutting further than you're talking about? Are you talking about Social Security? Are you talking about Medicare? Put the ball in their court and I think that's where the battle begins.
— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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Comments
Funny thing is
Submitted by dirtydan64 on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 2:28pm.
regardless if Republicans put there plan on the table now or after Obama submit's his budget the Liberal Democrats will still mock the republicans plan and say there cutting off all the important parts of gov't and no one will be able to live as they are. However again regardless if we save a $100 Billion or $1 Trillion it's never going to be enough to make a difference as far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, they will refer to it as just a drop in the bucket and unless you go after SS, Medicade there not going ot be any real cuts made to the spending or to our deficet so let Obama put his plan on the table and see what he's serious about cutting, I'm betting it's gonna resemble the Deficet commission's plan though not word for word but will be dam near identical in term of total amount of cuts to spending and deficet. Will of course have to wait and see if Obama even knows how to write a budget cause he has yet to write one !!!
The Republican numbers add up
Submitted by Hunter12 on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 2:30pm.
The Republican numbers add up very simply, Mark. They are proposing the federal government quit spending money it doesn't have and shouldn't get by leaving it in the hands of people who've proven they can manage it more efficiently. It can be shown by examining all the jobs generated by Stimulus money in the last three years. The bill has been a waste of money, especially where it can be shown to be an outright reward for the Democrats who passed it.
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." - Sir Winston Churchill
Deficit relativity
Submitted by KC Mulville on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 2:45pm.
Now is the deficit because you spent $200 or because you only took in $100? Well, it's relative. The deficit simply marks the discrepancy between what you took in and what you spent. Do you start with what you take in, and only spend that? Or do you take in whatever you spend? It's relative.
Most of us live in a world where we can't raise income to match spending. We can't tell the boss that he owes us more money because we're taking a trip to Disney World. Our normal experience is to restrict our spending to match our income.
When someone tells you that the Bush tax cuts add to the deficit, they're thinking is exactly opposite our normal experience. They're thinking that we spend first, and then take in income to match that.
What makes the difference is that government doesn't have a right to spend first, and then demand income later. The government spent money to stimulate the economy, but now they're charging us for the money they spent. The reason the economy never stimulated was that we all knew they'd be charging us, which made the whole exercise pointless.
We can't be broke
Submitted by another_old_veteran on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 2:52pm.
According to the democrats there are still checks in the checkbook.
“If you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality.” - Halton C. Arp
Another misguided leftie
Submitted by robert108 on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 3:16pm.
Another misguided leftie telling the Big Lie that tax rate reductions "add to the deficit". In fact, a reduction in tax rates generally results in an increase of revenues to the Treasury. The lefties take advantage of the economic ignorance of the average American, due to the fact that the govt schools don't empower our children by teaching them basic economics at the primary and secondary level. The term "tax cuts" sounds like tax collection is being reduced, which is deceiving.
OK, I know none of you
Submitted by inquiringmind on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 3:34pm.
OK, I know none of you journo-list reports took econ in college so let me make it simple for you.
You can go to your wealthy boss and ask for a raise to help cover your overspending and debt. If he says no that DOES NOT increase your debt.
In fact what would happen if all of you employees forced the boss to give you a raise in the name of covering your debts.
He might just have to fire some of you to cover payroll for the rest.
Libs, it ain't that hard. You just choose to not see it.
And I Was Really Counting on that Raise
Submitted by IrateNate on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 5:46pm.
So I've maxed out my credit card, and find myself owing $10,000. That's money I owe, already spent, otherwise known as debt. Yesterday, I asked the boss for a raise. He said no.
Liberal Math Quiz: how much debt did I just incur?
Cut Vital Services, the oldest trick in the Lib Play Book
Submitted by Red Jeep on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 7:36pm.
Whenever taxpayers complain about rising school taxes the Liberal's reply is that taxes must be raised or we will have to lay off teachers. (Instead of looking how to cutback on everything except teachers.)
Whenever taxpayers complain about rising city taxes the Liberal's reply is that taxes must be raised or policemen and firemen will have to be laid off. (Instead of...)
And so with the Feds when tax payers complain about higher taxes the Liberal's reply is that taxes must be raised or social security benefits and medicare benefits must be cut.
It never ends with them. Once a government position is created it can never be abolished.
Government to Libs is like that maniac plant in Little Shop of Horrors that as it grows larger and larger it demands FEED ME!
This guy is ignorant
Submitted by Hologram5 on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 7:43pm.
He doesn't realize the fact that the entire reason the Dimwits are claiming the tax breaks raise the deficit is because they are counting the money they already spent against the income they would have IF they did get the tax hikes. Morons.
Taxation is a scam. They've
Submitted by RR GOP on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 8:24pm.
Taxation is a scam. They've already shown us that they don't need our "money" to get what they want. All they have to do is print/authorize more and there it is! How can you pay down a debt inflated upon fiat currency with even less fiat currency than you can ever hope to get, no matter whom you tax nor how much?
In the meantime the Rothschild types will gladly extend credit even to the most undeserving countries as long as they get something real like gold, diamonds, water rights, mining rights and so on before the whole straw camel folds. Hell, the People's Republic got that decades ago.
What they need to do to stay in power is to keep us scared, on the brink of personal insolvency, and grumbling (at whomever they say we should grumble at...namely the rich) just enough to be at each others' throats, misdirected in our anger and generally frustrated so we come to rely on them for some kind of saftey net.
"Under Capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism it's just the opposite."
"All that Communism needs to make it successful is for someone to feed and clothe it."
I understand that liberals
Submitted by big.league.slider on Sat, 01/29/2011 - 1:37am.
I understand that liberals like Whitaker have an agenda when it comes to federal taxes and spending, but even they themselves have to realize how clueless they sound with this notion that the federal budget deficit is a result of insufficient tax revenues.
Imagine a private citizen going before a bankruptcy judge and claiming that the reason he is so deep in debt is not due to his borrowing and spending on things he could not afford, but instead was due to his greedy employer not paying him enough to cover his bills.
That ball is hit deep, deep,
Submitted by RESTLESS 1 on Sat, 01/29/2011 - 2:03am.
Deep, and its outta here!!!
Spot on.