July 20, 2011
The prospect of cutting Social Security benefits for seniors and giving more money to the very wealthy seems to have excited reporters so much that they just can’t get anything straight. The NYT again told readers that President Obama’s fiscal commission produced a deficit reduction plan. This is not true. The deficit commission did not have the votes necessary to produce a plan. The plan referred to in this article was the plan of the co-directors, former Senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles.
The article also assists President Obama in misrepresenting public opinion about the cuts proposed by the Senate Gang of Six plan. It comments:
“Seeking to sum up the current state of affairs, Mr. Obama said, ‘We have a Democratic president and administration that is prepared to sign a tough package that includes both spending cuts and modifications to , Medicaid and Medicare that would strengthen those systems’ and provide for new tax revenues. And, he added, ‘we now have a bipartisan group of senators’ and a majority of the American people who agree.”
President Obama was not in any obvious way “seeking to sum up the current state of affairs.” He was misrepresenting the state of affairs, presumably to advance his agenda. There are no public opinion polls that show the majority of the American people support the cuts to Social Security and Medicare in the Gang of Six plan. In fact, there are no polls that show even a majority of Republicans support such cuts. Presumably President Obama is aware of polling data on these issues.
It also would have been helpful to remind readers that President Obama means “cuts” when he refers to “modifications” to Social Security. Some readers may not have read the Gang of Six plan closely enough to realize that it proposes to cut Social Security benefits by an average of close to 6 percent.
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