Network Reporters and Sunday Hosts Rue Increased Deficit from Tax Compromise, As If Not Hiking Taxes is a ‘Cost’

Nearly 80 percent of the $858 billion “cost” of the compromise tax bill signed Friday by President Barack Obama is, per a Congressional Research Service estimate , from the $675 billion over the next ten years the government would have received if income tax rates were raised, a perspective widely adopted by network reporters and hosts who assumed just keeping rates at their current levels should be counted as a “cost” to the national debt and annual deficits. “The $858 billion price tag for this bill will be added to the already $14 trillion national debt,” ABC’s Jake Tapper concluded Friday night, “meaning we, our children and our children's children will likely be on the hook for the law that was passed today.” The Sunday interview shows echoed Tapper’s spin. On CBS’s Face the Nation , Bob Schieffer lamented how the tax bill “is going to just add to the deficit.” David Gregory, interviewing Vice President Biden on Meet the Press , bemoaned how the tax compromise will “add a trillion dollars to the deficit.” Later in the program, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough also exaggerated the $858 billion to $1 trillion as he declared: “It straps us with another trillion dollars worth of debt.” read more

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Network Reporters and Sunday Hosts Rue Increased Deficit from Tax Compromise, As If Not Hiking Taxes is a ‘Cost’

Posted by on December 20, 2010. Filed under Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry