Old habits die hard at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press — especially when those old habits help Dear Leader's regime look better, or less awful, than it deserves.
It's been eight days, but it's still worth a look. On November 13, the government released its Monthly Treasury Statement for October, showing that Uncle Sam ran a $122 billion deficit. In his coverage of that statement's release, the AP's Martin Crutsinger, in the wire service's monthly effort at miseducating the masses, wrote the following:
The $483 billion deficit for (fiscal) 2014 was the smallest since George W. Bush's last full year as president. When measured against the size of the economy, the deficit equaled 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, below the average for the last four decades. By comparison, the deficit for 2013 was $680 billion, or 4.1 percent of GDP.
The 2014 deficit mean the government borrowed 14 cents of every dollar it spent. Six years ago, that figure was 40 cents of borrowing for each dollar spent.
Both sentences in the second excerpted paragraph are indiputably wrong, as seen in the following graphic:
Taking Crutsinger's crud, phrase by phrase:
- "The 2014 deficit mean the government borrowed 14 cents of every dollar it spent." No, the growth in the national debt during fiscal 2014 means that the government borrowed 25 cents for every dollar it spent.
- "Six years ago ..." No, Crutsinger is clearly referring to fiscal 2009, which was five years ago, and just so happened to be a year during which Barack Obama was President for eight of its twelve months. Obama, thanks to the misadvertised and ineffective stimulus program, is primarily responsible for what has turned out to be a permanent ramp-up in federal government spending. How convenient that Crutsinger's obvious error makes readers think that what follows in the rest of his sentence occurred during Bush 43's presidency and not mostly during Obama's.
- "... that figure was 40 cents of borrowing for each dollar spent." No, that figure for fiscal 2009 was, as seen above 54 cents, not 40 cents.
Crutsinger was not done rewriting and miscasting history:
That sizable borrowing reflected deficits that topped $1 trillion annually for four consecutive years from 2009 to 2013 as the government struggled with a deep recession, which cut into tax revenues and forced higher spending for safety-net programs such as unemployment benefits and food stamps.
Actually, trillion-dollar budget deficits occurred from 2009 to 2012, but, as seen here, trillion-dollar increases in the national debt occurred from 2008 throught 2012. The trillion-dollar increase in the national debt during fiscal 2008 was largely driven by Troubled Asset Relief Program disbursements in that year's final month. TARP was a measure Senator Barack Obama heartily supported. In fact, "Senator Obama voted for the budgets he would later blame on Bush, and for the TARP bailout."
As to why the trillion-dollar deficits continued beyond 2009, any rational review of the record will show that, with the exception of defense, spending on federal programs and in federal departments having almost nothing to do with the business cycle exploded virtually across the board, and have remained at historically high levels. Here are just a few examples, two large and two small (all numbers in billions):
Social Security Administration — Fiscal 2008, $658; fiscal 2012, $821; increase of 25%
Health and Human Services — Fiscal 2008, $701; fiscal 2012, $848; increase of 21%
Office of Personnel Management — Fiscal 2008, $64; fiscal 2012, $79; increase of 23%
EPA — Fiscal 2008, $8; fiscal 2012, $13; increase of over 60%
Routine, unforced errors such as those described in this post explain why yours truly continues to monitor the AP's monthly reports on the federal budget. Each one is almost always a target-rich environment for bias and untruth.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
