Very unusually, CBS’s Katie Couric promised a look Thursday night at “how runaway government spending has exploded the national debt,” but between that segment and her show’s lead story, an “exclusive” interview with debt commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, Couric illustrated how she and the media are an impediment to rational spending decisions since they paint any decision to not spend more in terms of how that will hurt people. To wit, she despaired:
Also in Washington today, House Republicans blocked a further extension of jobless benefits set to expire on November 30th. If Congress doesn't act, two million Americans will stop receiving benefit checks during the holidays. That would be devastating to a place like Elkhart, Indiana. It had one of the nation's highest unemployment rates when Seth Doane first visited there two years ago and it is only now just starting to recover.
Deep in his empathetic piece, Doane noted: “These benefits can last up to 99 weeks. That's nearly three months longer than any time in U.S. history. They now cost the country nearly $224 billion a year.”
“The price tag certified,” Couric trumpeted in teasing the CBS Evening News before leading with how the CBO “put out a report that may help win over some Democrats,” reciting: “It says the plan, which would cost $940 billion over 10 years, would reduce the deficit over that same period by $138 billion.” She then cited a claim CBO didn't make: “It would cut the deficit over 20 years by more than $1 trillion.”
In 2009, Couric championed passage of the “stimulus” spending bill by giggling along with Nancy Pelosi (posted with video):
Katie Couric teased Wednesday's CBS Evening News by excitingly trumpeting: "Tonight, they've got a deal! Congress reaches agreement on an economic stimulus plan." She soon shared her enthusiasm in a taped interview with a triumphant House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Couric giggled along with Pelosi while asking if she was "surprised how intimately involved" President Obama "is in the whole process?" And, acting like a teenage girl gossiping about a friend's boyfriend, "Can you tell us anything he said to you, like 'get cracking'?
— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
