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Media
Research Center Topic Index
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T
Tax Cuts
FNC's Major Garrett offered a rare glimpse into how the middle class will get a far bigger percentage tax cut than the wealthy. NBC's Tim Russert challenged Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean about how Dean’s proposal to revoke the Bush tax cut would result in a 4000 percent tax hike for a $40,000-a-year family with two kids.
NBC's Norah O'Donnell focused on how the AARP argued the $400 billion prescription drug plan “will short-change seniors” and targeted the tax cut as the culprit.
Dan Rather tied President Bush’s “big federal tax cut plan” to fiscal problems in states and reporter Mark Strassman proceeded to deliver a glowing look at Alabama’s Republican Governor Bob Riley, who raised taxes in his state.
After complaining the $400 billion prescription drug entitlement was not enough, NBC’s Norah O’Donnell pointed out, “Some Democrats charge the recent tax cuts killed off any hope of closing the benefit gap.”
Columnist Thomas Friedman called the tax cut a “dangerous foray into wretched excess” that will “ultimately make our government, ourselves and our children less secure” by creating a dependence on foreign capital.
According to Tom Brokaw, low-income families who won’t receive a child tax credit because they don’t pay federal income taxes were “cut out of the recent tax cut.”
ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas applauded the Senate for passing “new tax cuts today to benefit families left out of the President’s relief package,” meaning low-income families who don’t pay federal income taxes to begin with.
A CyberAlert gave examples of network reporters, who criticized the tax cut because of its impact on the deficit but portrayed the new prescription drug entitlement as not being big enough.
A Media Reality Check called “New Senior Subsidies Won’t Make Deficits?” examined budget economics according to the Washington press corps: Tax cuts are bad and threaten to send the government further into deficit, but new, potentially mushrooming social spending programs are always good and have no impact on the creation of deficits.
Newsweek’s “Conventional Wisdom” box gave a down arrow to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for maintaining that the “working poor aren't entitled to tax cut,” though the magazine ludicrously asserted “they pay far greater share of income than his fat-cat friends.”
Without mentioning that low-income families don’t pay income taxes, Peter Jennings highlighted how “low-income families hoping to benefit from the latest congressional tax cuts will have to wait almost a year to get the child tax credit,” but the new House plan “does provide immediate relief to higher income earners.”
ABC’s Charles Gibson facilitated left-wing propaganda from the Children’s Defense Fund by interviewing the organization’s president who had organized a protest of Tom Delay’s opposition to the Senate bill meant to “restore” the child tax credit to low-income families.
Tom Brokaw again raised the subject of how “some low-income groups were left out” of “the President's tax cut,” but he also failed to point out that they were “left out” of something they put nothing into.
ABC’s Linda Douglass announced that the “big winners” of the tax cut battle were rich people, the “top five percent.” Douglass did not, however, reveal that the top five percent of taxpayers account for 56 percent of all federal income taxes even though they earn only 35 percent of income.
Playing off sympathy for low-paid military members, NBC’s Norah O'Donnell delivered a particularly distorted look at the tax situation for those in the military and found a military wife who complained of the tax cut, “I can't explain it, doesn't make sense to me, but it's pretty sad.”
Time’s Joe Klein and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and Eleanor Clift condemned the lack of a hike in the child credit for parents in lower income levels. Though Klein conceded that the people in question don’t pay income taxes, he called it “fairly nauseating” to hear Press Secretary Fleischer argue that the money should go to people who actually do.
PBS’s Bill Moyers ranted that the tax cuts “punished” children “for being poor,” even as the rich are rewarded for being rich.”
Washington Post reporter David Broder scolded tax cut supporters who supposedly “think it’s more important to get rid of the dividend tax than it is to take care of 11 million kids.”
On Good Morning America George Stephanopolous maintained that President Bush was the “biggest winner” after the tax cut bill passed, while the “very vulnerable group” of low-income families and children were the biggest losers.
New York Times reporter David Firestone quoted the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Citizens for Tax Justice as experts on the unfairness of the Bush tax cuts to low-income people.
All the network broadcasts treated as an indictment of the supposed unfairness of the income tax cut how low-income parents wouldn't get the increased child care credit. CNBC, NBC and CNN never clued viewers in on how those in that income range pay little, if any, income tax, while ABC and CBS only mentioned it late in their stories.
CBS’s Jane Clayson asserted that “the tax cut the President just signed will not help many who need help the most.”
Of the tax cut, Peter Jennings said, “A whole lot of people in the country who could use the money are not going to get it....”
Tom Brokaw called the fact that low-income families wouldn’t receive child tax credits an “embarrassing omission” in the tax cut bill.
After Ari Fleischer tried to explain that a person who owes $400 in taxes but gets a $500 child tax credit would actually be receiving $100 of someone else’s money, Moran pressed, “I just want to make sure that you are saying that the White House agreed to make the choice to leave these children behind.” All the distorted network reporting about how the new tax cut was unfair to low-income families who wouldn’t receive a child tax credit began with a New York Times story that served simply as a press release from the Center on Budget and Priority Policies. (CyberAlert, May 30, 2003)
A Media Reality Check, “Among the Tax Cut Losers: Biased Journalists,” documented how the networks had picked up on a biased
New York Times story and further distorted reporting on the tax cut, especially the child tax credit.
Brokaw greeted President Bush's signing of the tax cut bill by lamenting how “yesterday there was no ceremony for the President’s signature on a bill allowing the government to borrow almost $7.5 trillion.” On This Week, ABC News reporter Michel Martin denounced the tax cut as a “yuppie tax cut” because it reminded her of yuppies who “deny their children everything and themselves nothing.” (CyberAlert, May 27, 2003)
CNN’s Bill Schneider reported that “many voters are celebrating a tax hike” after the electorate of Multnomah County, Ore., voted to impose a 1.25 percent income tax.
Katie Couric and Ted Koppel treated billionaire Warren Buffett, a regular contributor to liberal Democrats, as an expert on what was wrong with the tax cut.
An on-screen graphic on ABC’s World News Tonight read, “TAX CUT WINNERS: Top 5% taxpayers get more than half of benefits.” Reporter Linda Douglass didn't bother to inform viewers that the top five percent of income earners also pay more than half – 56 percent -- of the income taxes collected.
Though a $350 billion tax cut was half the size of the original plan and would represent barely a 1 percent reduction in expected tax revenue to the federal government over the next ten years, Dan Rather described it as “President Bush's big tax cut plan.” On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos marveled at how Bush won a tax cut vote in the Senate given the size of the deficit, how the cut was “weighted to the rich” and the public would supposedly prefer the money go to health care and services. (CyberAlert, May 19, 2003)
NPR’s Nina Totenberg complained that the tax cuts were “a really stupid way to run a budget,” because “the amount in this tax bill is about what the deficit is.”
After a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans thought the tax cuts were a good idea, an increase of 10 percentage points in two weeks,
Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman called it “a remarkable testament to the administration’s long-running efforts to neutralize a Democratic political staple” since the cuts “clearly do favor the affluent.”
Dan Rather announced a new CBS News/New York Times poll found the tax cut was a “problematic sell for the President,” since “less than half the respondents thought the Bush tax cut would actually help the economy.”
CBS’s Bob Schieffer and Time’s Karen Tumulty lamented the state of the budget in California, supposedly caused by the federal tax cuts. Tumulty even claimed, “Gray Davis is in the position of having to decide whether he should deny prosthetic limbs to poor people.”
Peter Jennings plugged an upcoming story on
World News Tonight: “When we come back this evening, the states forced to raise taxes as the federal government cuts taxes.”
George Stephanopoulos insisted to Michael Bloomberg that he was “being forced to raise taxes now,” because of the federal tax cut: “But if the federal government cuts taxes, isn't that going to make New York City revenues fall further, aren't they tied to the federal government revenues?”
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek
International, approached the proposed Bush tax cut from the left, claiming it's “mostly skewed to they very wealthy” and that “the wealthy actually save those tax cuts whereas middle-class people spend them.”
All the networks focused on the jump in the unemployment rate from 5.8 to 6 percent and tied it to the proposed “giant” tax cut.
The networks mischaracterized Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's comments before the House Financial Services Committee, hyping how he had supposedly come out against Bush's plan. Peter Jennings even suggested Greenspan advocated tax hikes. Lou Dobbs, anchor of CNN's
Moneyline, noted what his colleagues all ignored: “The Fed Chairman also reiterated his support for the President's proposed dividend tax cut.”
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter called Dick Gephardt’s plan to repeal Bush’s tax cut to fund a plan paying employers to provide universal health insurance “conservative,” saying it “acknowledges that the private health-care system we’ve got is here to stay.”
In briefly noting how President Bush had decided to nominate Alan Greenspan for another term as Fed Chairman, Jennings reminded viewers that “Mr. Greenspan said the President's plans for a huge tax cut would do little to stimulate the economy.”
Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt called the tax cut “a giveaway to wealthy investors and contributors” and suggested President Bush use the former Iraqi information minister to convince voters of its benefits because he “knows how to sell a fraud.”
Time's Margaret Carlson, the Wall Street
Journal's Al Hunt and NBC's Tim Russert denounced President Bush's tax cut as fiscally irresponsible while not mentioning plans for a new prescription drug benefit which will easily exceed the “cost” of the tax cut, or how the Bush tax cut, on a static basis, will reduce federal tax revenue by barely 3 percent. They characterized the cut as “large,” “ill-advised” and “a fraud.”
On NBC Nightly News, Campbell Brown referred to President Bush's “massive” tax cut that a new poll “shows Americans have little enthusiasm for.” Brown's shot at the tax cut came after anchor Tom Brokaw noted that a new NBC
News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 71 percent approve of Bush's performance while 23 percent disapprove.
When Tom Brokaw proposed to Russert “this is not the time for the tax cut” because Iraqi reconstruction would “cost a lot of money,” Russert cheerfully agreed, trumpeting the fact that “it’s not a partisan issue any longer” because Republican senators John McCain George Voinovich, and Olympia Snowe were all opposed to the President’s plan.
George Stephanopolous and Tim Russert suggested the tax cuts be rejected “because of the war” and the “size of the deficit right now.”
On Today, Ann Curry told Lawrence Kudlow that “a lot of people are very worried” about the negative effect tax cuts could have on the economy.
Bob Schieffer scolded President Bush, saying that “you can’t tell people one day that we gotta defeat terrorism and that it poses this grave threat to us but then the next day tell us, 'well we can do it with business as usual and cut taxes.'”
NBC’s Matt Lauer complained about how the war in Iraq would add to the potential deficit and asked, “Shouldn’t this be a time when you’re increasing taxes?” ABC's Diane Sawyer, CBS's Hannah Storm and NBC's Ann Curry all pushed Treasury Secretary John Snow from the left on tax cuts, all failed to hit him from the right by asking about plans by both parties for a massive spending increase to create an entitlement program for prescription coverage in Medicare. (CyberAlert, March 6, 2003)
ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked Treasury Secretary John Snow if Americans were “going to pay a price” for cutting taxes during war time.
Tom Brokaw said the President was calling for “huge new tax cuts” but noted that “Democrats said the administration is making huge debt.”
Tom Brokaw stressed how President Bush's proposed budget “contains record deficits” and “huge tax cuts,” though the tax cuts represent less than one-twentieth of the expected federal spending over the next ten years.
Less than six hours after the Columbia disaster Dan Rather went political and raised how the Bush tax cut may be an impediment to improving NASA and launching new missions. Rather wondered where the money is “going to come from with a nation that's fighting one war, on the brink of another war, going through a series of not tax increases but tax cuts.”
The Investor's Business Daily featured an editorial citing the findings of the MRC study by Rich Noyes documenting the anti-tax cut slant of ABC, CBS and NBC evening show coverage of Bush's plan.
Tim Russert stressed the fact that top Senate and House Republicans were not completely on board with the President’s tax cut, noting: “The President made another mention about eliminating taxes on the dividends from stocks. The Chairman of the Finance Committee, Republican Chuck Grassley, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Republican Bill Thomas, decidedly cool to that point...”
Today’s Katie Couric asked CNBC’s Ron Insana to confirm that “everybody thinks” the dividend tax cut “does favor the rich instead of the working class.”
The New York Times managed to quote two “Republicans” in a story about a
Times/CBS News poll that found declining approval for President Bush and his economic policies. But both “Republicans” trashed Bush from the left, complaining that Bush was “concentrating on the war effort in Iraq and not worrying about the country” and “we should not be cutting taxes as long as there is a deficit.”
A Media Reality Check, “Reporters Push Spin of Anti-Tax Cut Liberals,” examined how the liberal media presented Democratic spin as fact when covering the tax cuts.
On NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw showcased Bill Clinton’s attack on President Bush’s tax cuts. According to Brokaw, Clinton had called the cuts “‘a giveaway to the rich’ when too many low and middle income Americans are struggling to pay for health care and states are forced to cut back on basic services.”
NBC’s Campbell Brown asserted that 37 percent favor the Bush tax cut plan, but more, 42 percent, prefer the Democratic plan.
A Fox News poll by Opinion Dynamics found that a majority agreed with five of the six parts of the tax cut.
An NBC Nightly News story by Lisa Myers on the tax cut quoted Brookings Institute economist Peter Orszag as an expert. The MRC’s Rich Noyes later found out that Orszag had donated $250 in September of 2002 to Dan Wofford, an unsuccessful Democratic congressional candidate for Pennsylvania's 6th district seat. Picking up on the Bush administration's claim that “92 million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money," NBC’s Lisa Myers offered a “Reality Check” that focused on how "the claim is true, experts say, but misleading.” (CyberAlert, January 15, 2003)
Time highlighted how “almost half of all filers would get reductions of less than $100” as “the top 1% would get breaks of $24,400, on average.”
On This Week, George Stephanopoulos reminded Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle that his criticism of the unfairness of Bush's plan was “similar to what you said when, ah, we were fighting the original Bush tax package in 2001.”
CBS’s Bob Schieffer and Washington Post reporter Dan Balz repeatedly pressed Commerce Secretary Don Evans to justify the tax cut given how it will supposedly increase the deficit and is skewed toward the rich.
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz asked Commerce Secretary Don Evans where the “equity” was in a plan that, according to Balz, did “an enormous amount” for the wealthy and “nothing” for the poor.
The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt claimed the Bush administration was making the tax cut proposal for personal gain: “Bloomberg reported that George W. Bush himself, $44,000 tax break here. Dick Cheney, $327,000 tax break.”
A Washington Times editorial documented how a
New York Times story distorted the impact the tax cuts would have on a typical family.
E.J. Dionne appeared on FNC's Weekend Live with Tony Snow to publicize his allegation that conservatives dominate the media and have kowtowed any media liberals into silence, but a slanted story on Bush’s tax cut in Dionne’s own paper, the
Washington Post, illustrated exactly the opposite.
Tony Snow suggested that poor people don’t pay their fair share in taxes, since they get the largest proportional tax breaks, while the rich get the smallest.
The headlines and subheadlines from the
New York Times “Washington Final” print edition demonstrated how most of the news stories in the paper expressed hostility toward Bush’s tax cut plan or reflected the liberal spin about how it helps the rich.
On Nightline, Chris Bury said the President’s tax cut plan was a “tough sell” because Americans were concerned about the “fairness of the President’s tax policies.”
Fox News Channel’s Steve Doocy and CBS’s Harry Smith acknowledged that tax cuts for low and middle-income earners were larger by percentage than those for high-income earners, who pay most of the taxes in America.
Ignoring the several elements of Bush’s tax cut plan that would be retroactive to January 2003, Peter Jennings highlighted only the plan to eliminate the tax on dividends and how it would not provide a benefit until next year.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw stressed how “the centerpiece” of Bush’s plan “is a massive tax cut the Democrats were quick to say favors the wealthy, reviving the charge that it is 'trickle down economics.’”
Dan Rather highlighted how a new CBS News poll determined that “only 14 percent say cutting taxes should be Congress's top priority,” but failed to inform viewers that 54 percent considered “helping unemployed and creating jobs” to be the highest priority, a goal which Bush backers would said would be achieved through tax cuts.
A CBS Evening News story supported the liberal premise that Bush’s tax cut would help the rich while abandoning the poor by featuring expert comment from CPA Avery Neumark who, it turned out, had made large contributions to the Democratic National Committee and liberal Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped nearly 178 and the NASDAQ rose 34 at news of President Bush’s proposal to completely eliminate the tax on dividends, but CBS
Early Show host Harry Smith claimed the market was “not exactly flooded with buyers.”
ABC’s Diane Sawyer pressed new Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist from the left about how the Bush tax cut was supposedly skewed to the rich, but, in an unusual event, NBC’s Katie Couric hit Senator John McCain, a tax-cut opponent, with how the middle class would benefit greatly.
A Media Reality Check, “Shocked by Plan to Cut Taxes for Taxpayers,” revealed how the network reporters seemed uninterested in exploring the changes in economic activity that conservatives expected from Bush’s tax cut.
CBS’s John Roberts adopted the liberal line that President Bush’s tax cut plan “would give the most to the rich and reduce tax receipts in the short-term” and suggested both the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ plans are “as much about political insulation as they are economic stimulation.”
According to Mellody Hobson, personal finance expert for ABC’s
Good Morning America, “even wealthy investors like Bill Bartholomay, Chairman of the Atlanta Braves, are uneasy” about the Bush tax cut. A search on OpenSecrets.com revealed that Hobson had contributed over $40,000 to Democrats in recent years, but a piddling $1,250 to Republicans.
Both ABC and NBC highlighted that John McCain, a “prominent Republican,” was opposed to Bush’s tax cut plan.
Without challenge, New York Times reporter Edmund Andrews quoted Senator Daschle’s objection to the tax cut. Andrews noted how, with a dividend tax cut, the “benefits flow almost exclusively to the very wealthiest taxpayers” and “about 64 percent of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers.”
ABC, CBS, CNBC and NBC all gave credence to the assumption that Bush's tax cuts would unfairly benefit the wealthy. Though they allowed President Bush to reject that notion, none of the networks bothered to inform viewers of how in 2000, according to IRS data, the top ten percent of taxpayers paid 67.33 percent of income taxes collected while the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers, those making $27,682 or below, paid less than four percent of taxes collected.
An AP headline announced, “Poll: Americans Wary of Tax Cuts, War,” but the story was based on a loaded poll question, which read, “Is it more important to pass additional tax cuts to stimulate the economy now or to hold off on tax cuts so the budget does not go into a deeper deficit?”
CNN’s Bruce Morton called Bush “a Reagan Republican” who favored “big tax cuts tilted toward the rich.” Morton also promoted Democrats’ tax cut plan, which would “be aimed at lower- and middle-income Americans.”
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift gave her award for “Most Stagnant Thinker” to Bush’s economic team “for thinking tax cuts are the answer to everything.”
U.S. News & World Report Editor-at-Large David Gergen wondered, “How can we look at ourselves in the mirror if we keep shoving tax cuts into our pockets while letting poor, elderly people go without doctors and medicine?” The quote won first place for the “Media Millionaires for Smaller Paychecks Award (for Demanding the Tax Cut Be Repealed)” in the MRC’s Best
Notable Quotables of 2002.
Tim Russert suggested that Congress should “freeze” tax cuts “until we are sure we have the money to pay for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.”
Peter Jennings noted that Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow was in favor of further tax cuts but against deficits, and asked George Stephanopolous, “Doesn’t one lead to the other?”
A compilation of questions from NBC Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert was first runner-up for the “Media Millionaires for Smaller Paychecks Award (for Demanding the Tax Cut Be Repealed)” in the MRC’s Best
Notable Quotables of 2002.
Tim Russert read from a Concord Coalition ad in the
New York Times opposing the tax cut: “We ask our soldiers to sacrifice. What about the rest of us?” Russert pointed out that Bush’s new economic advisor was a member of the Coalition and in favor of “freezing or postponing those tax cuts.” He asked Republican Senator Rick Santorum and Democratic Senator Carl Levin if they thought Congress should do so “until we are sure we have the money to pay for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq?”
ABC’s Peter Jennings and CBS’s Dan Rather displayed contempt for the tax cut policies President Bush’s new Treasury Secretary nominee, John Snow was expected to push. Jennings relayed the standard liberal assumption that tax cuts cause deficits, while Rather described Snow as “a long-time corporate-backer of Republican candidates” and denounced tax cuts as “controversial.”
A Media Reality Check titled “How the Liberal Media Are Preparing for Tax Wars” showed how network reporters made a hero out of the anti-tax cut former Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, after he was fired and replaced by John Snow
On Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams wrongly asserted that a dividend tax cut would mean that corporations wouldn’t have to pay taxes. The other panelists corrected him.
Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt incorporated President Bush’s slight reduction in a federal pay hike into his “Outrage of the Week” on
Capital Gang.
The Washington Post and New York Times ran contradicting headlines about Alan Greenspan’s opinion on the tax cut.
CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera listed several reasons for the upward trend in stock prices, including the anticipation of Republicans providing more tax cuts.
ABC anchor Peter Jennings, in noting Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s appearance before a House committee, declared that though the Bush administration has “been trying to get Mr. Greenspan to endorse a permanent tax cut, he won't go for it.” The
New York Times, however, ran a front-page headline that read: “Fed Chief Says He Backs Bush on the Tax Cut.”
After Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan appeared before a House committee, Peter Jennings made sure to tell viewers that Greenspan refused to endorse a permanent tax cut.
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift agreed with Bill Moyers’ anti-conservative diatribe, claiming that the tax cuts that the Republican party promotes aid the primarily the most wealthy: “If you spend your money that way, you can’t spend it on programs that are targeted to the middle class and the poor.”
On PBS’s Washington Week, Alan Murray exclaimed that “amazingly, given that we’re facing a $150 billion deficit for this year and next,” Republicans were determined to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent and even provide new tax reductions. Murray quoted John McCain as an infallible authority on why tax cuts must be for the poor and not the wealthy.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw remarked that by advocating more tax cuts, Republicans are “rolling up record deficits again.” CNBC’s Ron Insana, however, undermined Brokaw’s concern by pointing out how, as a percentage of GDP, deficits were lower than they were ten years ago and “even Democratic economists” concede deficits are not bad during an economic downturn.
After a poll showed a majority of respondents wanted the government to do “less” rather than “more” in their lives, Tim Russert asserted that the Democrats knew they couldn’t go back to being perceived as “big government liberals” and predicted that they would suggest replacing a permanent tax cut for the wealthy with a cut in the payroll tax for middle-class Americans.
Tim Russert conducted two Senate debates with the Republican and Democratic candidates in Colorado and South Carolina, using each to press the candidates from both parties to agree with his own personal agenda in favor of rescinding the Bush tax cuts.
Tim Russert pressed Senate candidates Lindsey Graham and Alex Sanders of South Carolina to “postpone” the Bush tax cut and refused to press his guests from the right on the subject.
Tim Russert called Senate candidate Lindsey Graham “prescient” and “prophetic” because he had sided against the President’s tax cut in 2000 and unemployment and the deficit were up since the inauguration.
Tim Russert asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was already opposed to the tax cuts, “If you feel so seriously about it, Senator, why not postpone the tax cut, freeze it and not let it take place?”
ABC’s Linda Douglass reported that the government had failed to notify low-income taxpayers that they were “owed” a “tax refund” under a new law that instituted a $600-per-child tax credit. Douglass also reported that the IRS had said it was too complicated and expensive to notify them.
After relaying accusations that Bush had been using the war to obscure economic troubles, NBC reporter Campbell Brown reminded viewers of the country’s economic problems since Bush came to office and how the President had said before he’d be introducing new initiatives like tax cuts.
Tim Russert pressed his Meet the Press guests, Republican Colorado Senator Wayne Allard and his Democratic opponent, Ted Strickland, to agree with his view that the tax cuts should be rescinded or postponed “in order to raise revenues to help fight the war in Iraq.”
The MRC’s Rich Noyes documented how network news during Summer 2002 had been “almost entirely organized around liberal themes and arguments,” like repealing the tax cut.
ABC's Terry Moran asserted that Bush’s pre-September 11 presidency lacked purpose and had only a “vague ambition to do good, a tax cut that was, frankly, cooked up during the heat of a political campaign.”
On Meet the Press, noting how war is shaping up in Afghanistan and Iraq, Tim Russert pushed Senator Hillary Clinton to stand by her statement of a year earlier that the Bush tax cut should be rescinded.
Tim Russert repeatedly pressed Rep. Nita Lowey and Rep. Tom Davis to agree that President Bush’s tax cut should be rescinded or postponed.
CBS’s John Roberts asked DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe why there was “no great hue and cry among Democrats in Congress to repeal the tax cut,” since it seemed to benefit wealthy investors over middle and low-income families
George Stephanopolous suggested President Bush had neglected safety and emergency initiatives in favor of the tax cut.
As substitute host of Inside
Politics, CNN’s John King questioned Democrats from the left and Republicans from the right on tax cuts. King asked House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Senator Hillary Clinton about “repealing” the tax cuts, but he also pressed both OMB Director Mitch Daniels and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill about “accelerating” the tax cut rollout.
A Media Reality Check titled “Why No Coverage of Tax-Cut Solutions?” showed how none of the three broadcast evening news shows had given the slightest coverage to proposed remedies that might mean a few less dollars for the federal government.
Citing a deficit that’s larger than Americans thought, Tim Russert asked Democratic Senator Joe Biden, “Can we afford an invasion of Iraq and also maintain the Bush tax cut?”
Eleanor Clift gave the 107th Congress a D for a tax bill it passed “to provide cover for a tax cut that we can’t afford and that we’re going to be digging out from under for the next ten years.”
With Congress going on summer break, CBS’s Joie Chen recalled how it had passed “a huge tax cut.” In fact, Bush’s total tax cut amounted to only 0.9 percent of total GDP. Even John F. Kennedy’s tax cut was 2.0 percent of GDP.
PBS’s Bill Moyers concluded an episode of his show
NOW by using a story on a children’s residential treatment center to lead into a condemnation of President Bush’s tax cut. “You have to wonder what would happen,” he said, “if the powers that be were as determined to make the system work for America's poorest as they are for America's richest.”
Columnist David Broder wondered what could be done about “the huge tax cut…virtually all of which will go to the highest-income voters”
Normally a balanced interviewer, NBC’s Tim Russert had “abandoned his objectivity in a crusade to dilute the tax cut’s benefits,” an MRC
Media Reality Check reported. While making tax cut supporters defend their views, Russert similarly challenge opponents with conservative arguments but invited them to criticize the tax cut as he lobbied for its repeal.
The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt blamed the crisis of confidence in the economy partly on “that reckless tax cut for the wealthy.”
On Meet the Press Tim Russert made a possible Freudian slip: “We’re going to take a quick break and come back and talk about the tax cut, if anything can be done about it.”
Mike Allen called the President’s tax cut “mammoth” in a
Washington Post story, even thought the tax cut amount would only be about 5.7 percent of expected federal tax collections.
U.S. News and World Report’s David Gergen was appalled that Americans would indulge themselves with tax cuts while “poor, elderly people go without doctors and medicine.” The quote won first place for the “Media Millionaires for Smaller Paychecks Award (for Demanding the Tax Cut Be Repealed)” of the Best
Notable Quotables of 2002.
NBC’s Matt Lauer suddenly realized the benefits of a tax cut: “It's nice that people are getting more money.”
CBS’s Bob Schieffer blamed House Republicans for “coupling unemployment benefits with huge tax cuts for business.”
On NBC Nightly News, David Gregory focused on the “cost” of the tax cut “at a time when the government's finances are in the red." Regretting President Bush’s lack of a call for “sacrifice” in his State of the Union address, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas proclaimed on Inside Washington that he wished the President would call for a tax increase because he “would happily pay more in taxes.” (CyberAlert, February 4, 2002)
Time’s Margaret Carlson denounced Bush’s tax cut and complained that he was “not spending this huge popularity he has to do anything that is not in keeping with the conservative dreams of his party.”
Reporters on Fox, MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and ABC expressed disappointment after the State of the Union speech at how President Bush had neither abandoned his tax cuts nor championed campaign finance reform.
Senator Tom Daschle claimed the tax cut made the recession worse while President Bush warned that Democrats wanted to raise taxes, but in a CBS
Evening News story, John Roberts only provided time to a Democrat to dismiss Bush’s claim. NBC’s David Gregory passed along how Democrats blamed the deficit on “Bush’s trillion dollar plus tax cut,” but he didn’t mention that only a small fraction of the tax cut has occurred
Tim Russert pushed Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to concede the tax cut must be rescinded or delayed in order to avoid deficits and protect Social Security. Russert asked, "What has caused the disappearance of the surplus: the war, the recession or tax cuts or all three?" but didn’t mention anything about rising government spending.
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