[school-discuss] something about the news from washington that was "aired out" in the new york times

[mike eschman <meschman@engima.com>]

The Memory HoleBy PAUL KRUGMAN

 

inston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," was a 
rewrite man. His job was to destroy documents that could undermine the 
government's pretense of infallibility, and replace them with altered 
versions. 
Lately, Winston Smith has gone to Washington. I'm sure that lots of history is 
being falsified as you read this - there are several three-letter agencies I 
don't trust at all - but two cases involving the federal budget caught my 
eye.
 First is the "Chicago line." Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush told his 
budget director that the only valid reasons to break his pledge not to run 
budget deficits would be if the country experienced recession, war or 
national emergency. "Lucky me," he said. "I hit the trifecta."
 When I first reported this remark, angry readers accused me of inventing it. 
Mr. Bush, they said, is a decent man who would never imply that the nation's 
woes had taken him off the hook, let alone make a joke out of it. 
Soon afterward, the trifecta story became part of Mr. Bush's standard stump 
speech. It always gets a roar of appreciative laughter from Republican 
audiences.
 So what's the Chicago line? In his speeches, Mr. Bush claims to have laid out 
the criteria for running a deficit when visiting Chicago during the 2000 
campaign. But there's no evidence that he said anything of the sort during 
the campaign, in Chicago or anywhere else; certainly none of the reporters 
who were with him can remember it. (The New Republic, which has tracked the 
claim, titled one of its pieces "Stop him before he lies again.") In fact, 
during the campaign his budget promises were unqualified, for good reason. If 
he had conceded that future surpluses were not guaranteed, voters might have 
wondered whether it was wise to lock in a 10-year tax cut.
 About that 10-year tax cut: It basically takes place in two phases. Phase I, 
which has mainly happened already, is a smallish tax cut for the middle 
class. Phase II, which won't be completed until 2010, is a considerably 
larger cut that goes mostly to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.
 That two-phase structure offers substantial opportunities for misdirection. 
If someone suggests reconsidering future tax cuts, the administration can 
accuse him of wanting to raise taxes in a recession - implying, falsely, that 
he wants to reverse Phase I rather than simply call off Phase II. On the 
other hand, if someone says that tax cuts have worsened the budget picture, 
the administration can say that tax cuts explain only 15 percent of the move 
into deficit. This sounds definitive, but in fact it refers only to the 
impact of Phase I on this year's budget; by the administration's own 
estimates, 40 percent of the $4 trillion deterioration in the 10-year outlook 
is due to tax cuts.
 There is, however, an art to this sort of deception: you have to imply the 
falsehood without actually saying it outright. Last month the Office of 
Management and Budget got sloppy: it issued a press release stating flatly 
that tax cuts were responsible for only 15 percent of the 10-year 
deterioration. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noticed, and I 
reported it here.
 Now for the fun part. The O.M.B. reacted angrily, and published a letter in 
The Times attacking me. It attributed the misstatement to "error," and 
declared that it had been "retracted." Was it?
 It depends on what you mean by the word "retract." As far as anyone knows, 
O.M.B. didn't issue a revised statement conceding that it had misinformed 
reporters and giving the right numbers. It simply threw the embarrassing 
document down the memory hole. As Brendan Nyhan pointed out in Salon, if you 
go to the O.M.B.'s Web site now you find a press release dated July 12 that 
is not the release actually handed out on that date. There is no indication 
that anything has been changed, but the bullet point on sources of the 
deficit is gone. 
Every government tries to make excuses for its past errors, but I don't think 
any previous U.S. administration has been this brazen about rewriting history 
to make itself look good. For this kind of thing to happen you have to have 
politicians who have no qualms about playing Big Brother; officials whose 
partisan loyalty trumps their professional scruples; and a press corps that, 
with some honorable exceptions, lets the people in power get away with it.
 Lucky us: we hit the trifecta.