Dean Baker: AP Goes Off The Deep End With Deficit Scold David Walker

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AP Goes Off The Deep End With Deficit Scold David Walker

Saturday, 24 August 2013 11:39
By Dean Baker, Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed


On Wednesday the Associated Press fielded its entry in the classics in bad reporting on economic policy contest: a profile it did of David Walker, the former head of the Government Accountability Office and also former president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The piece presented everything that Walker said at face value, making no effort to put his scare story in any context nor to verify his assertions.

The AP entry starts out strong with the third paragraph telling readers:

“Next month, he will present a major report for the nonprofit he founded, the Comeback America Initiative, whose purpose is to raise awareness about the federal government’s swelling debt. It’s a chasm that isn’t top of mind for most Americans, he knows. But Walker, 61, wants it to be.”

Note the use of “swelling” instead of a more neutral term or maybe no adjective at all. Then we get the term “chasm” as opposed to a term like “issue.”

Then we are told that Walker passes around fake trillion bills because, quoting Walker:

““Washington spends a trillion dollars like it’s nothing.”

Is that true? I recall big debates in the last few weeks over spending $40 billion on food stamps over the next decade. We’ve had big debates over the $250 million (1/4,000th of a trillion) [number corrected] spent each year on public broadcasting. In fact, John McCain made a big issue in his 2008 presidential campaign over spending $1 million (one millionth of a trillion) on a Woodstock museum. There seem to be lots of very big debates in Washington on spending sums that are way smaller than $1 trillion. ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18378-ap-goes-off-the-deep-end-with-deficit-scold-david-walker

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