Ghost Stories
by digby
The vigilant Ben Somberg catches the press once again overstating, if not completely fabricating, deficit hysteria among the public:
In a page-three White House Memo by Jackie Calmes ("Spend or Scrimp? Economic and Political Teams Debate") the paper asserts:
While President Bill Clinton’s political advisers favored more spending and tax cuts coming out of the recession of the early 1990s and his economic team pushed to start reducing deficits, in President Obama’s circle the opposite is true. Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur the economy to avert another recession.
Widespread public anger! Yikes! Where exactly are these angry people?
There's another article inside today's Times, with the online headline "Budget Deficit and Wars’ Cost Draw Fire on the Home Front" -- and I thought maybe that would have some evidence of public concern about the deficit. Nope.
What about the polling? The polls haven't directly asked the question "How angry are you about the deficit?" Fifty-three percent of the public doesn't approve of the way Obama is handling the deficit, according to the Times' poll from April. What portion of the public is particularly concerned -- let alone angry -- about the deficit, though, wasn't measured.
A question many of the polls have asked is basically "what's your top concern?" And on that front, not many people go for deficit. I examined those polls in my post the other week; the portion of people who thought deficit was most important goes anywhere from 5% to 23%, depending on which poll you go with. Jobs and the economy in general are much higher priorities for the public.
Not to worry though. I'm sure if the press keeps this up, they can make the public see deficits as the cause of all their economic problems and then their proclamations will seem to have been correct.
Plus David Brooks says so and lord knows he speaks for the working man.
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