Carpe Datum

Simple Math

Very good column recently by Matt Miller about the press and Republican policies:

Proof of the GOP's honesty deficit comes by asking a simple question: What is the Republican position on the right size of government and how to fund it?

Start with basic but poorly understood facts. Seven programs make up 75 percent of all federal spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense and interest on the debt. That's "big government."

Republicans aren't trying to cut a dime of it but are calling for big increases in every one of these programs. According to the White House, interest on the national debt alone will soar by 66 percent over the next five years, thanks to the red ink oozing from President Bush's budget.

Those "big 7" programs come before you toss in everything from NASA to the national parks to the National Institutes of Health, not to mention homeland security, student loans and farm subsidies -- all things Republicans support, and which take up a goodly portion of the remaining quarter on the federal dollar.

Thus, if you pay heed to their votes and not their words, the Republican critique of "big government" is a pure charade. ...

Over the next five years, President Bush figures the "big 7" programs will cost, on average, about $1.8 trillion a year.

Over the same period, he says, the revenue the government will collect, not counting Social Security taxes (which both parties say shouldn't be used for current spending, though it is), will average $1.35 trillion a year -- $450 billion a year less than just the "big 7" on which Republicans want to spend more.

Income tax reduction under President Bush accounts for most of this gap. ...

If we had a functioning press corps -- one that simply presented these facts again and again -- the fiscal and moral fraud of the GOP position would be self-evident.

Instead, today's press corps chews endlessly over the political jockeying. "Does Bush have Democrats in a bind because they have to talk about repealing his tax cuts?" they ask, rather than laying out the facts that show that Bush's positions are an obvious hoax.

So much for our "adversarial" press! And because the White House knows top editors and producers will think that repeating these tougher questions and analyses would seem too "biased," they can count on "he-said, she-said" coverage to leave citizens confused.

Thanks again, liberal media!