Don't believe the cliff hype.
By Peter Hart
The
biggest story in Washington is about something that doesn't really exist: the
so-called ”fiscal cliff.” This manufactured panic is all about politicians and
corporate interests getting things they want — things that don't have much to
do with the “crisis” anyway. But instead of challenging this spin, big media
outlets are playing along.
So
what's the not-really-a-cliff anyway? It's a number of things that are set to
happen all at once starting in January. On the one hand, there are budget cuts,
more or less equally divided between military and domestic spending. The threat
of those cuts was supposed to force Congress to reach a deal last year. It
didn't.
Astonishing,
sure. And if it all happened, the country would very likely be thrown into
another recession. But will it happen? That's extremely unlikely. And is it
really a cliff? Absolutely not.
A
cliff, literally speaking, isn't something you can fall off only a little bit.
But this tax and spending problem could go right into January without much
disruption for taxpayers or the economy. And there are plenty of ways to make
sure that most Americans won't see a massive tax increase. Those scary numbers
you're hearing rest on the assumption that no deal is reached for the entire
year.
So
why call it a cliff then? To make it seem like an immediate response is
essential. There are powerful interests looking to use a ”crisis” to push for
policy changes that have nothing to do with the current problem. So you might
turn on the TV and hear the millionaire CEO of a major corporation say the
cliff is really about the ”need” to cut the earned-benefit programs Social
Security and Medicare.
Oh,
they don't call them ”cuts” — they prefer to talk about ”reforming” our
”entitlement programs.” But they're talking about cuts that aren't a required
part of what it will take to get the country's fiscal house in order. Social Security
and Medicare spending isn't,
in fact, what's causing the fiscal problems we're told must be solved.
And
the fact that some of these CEOs are the same Wall Street wizards who played a
key role in creating the housing crisis and the Great Recession, which actually
did cause fiscal woes by depressing tax revenue at the local, state and federal levels, doesn't come up. We're supposed
to see them as responsible stewards of the economy.
Cutting Medicare is the part of the
plan these austerity-loving chief executives are happy to talk about on TV.
”The big nut is going to have to be Medicare/Medicaid,” Honeywell CEO
David Cote said in a CBS-broadcast
interview. ”At the end of the day, you can't avoid the topic.”
But
that's not all they have in mind. Wouldn't you know it, their prescription for
the country's debt problem calls for an array of tax breaks for corporations.
In other words, these CEOs are aiming for tax breaks for themselves, at the
expense of Social Security and Medicare. They're putting two of the country's
most effective and popular social programs arbitrarily at risk, under the guise
of shrinking the federal budget deficit.
If
journalism is to do us any good at all, the major media must expose this
selfish agenda.
While
a few skeptical reports have begun to appear in The Washington Post, New
York Magazine, and on CNN, just about everywhere you turn you find
stories about the dreaded but dubious fiscal cliff. Don't believe the hype.
Peter
Hart is the activism director of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. www.fair.org
Distributed via OtherWords. (OtherWords.org)
Distributed via OtherWords. (OtherWords.org)
