October 31, 2010
The Washington Post (a.k.a. “Fox on 15th Street) clearly is on the opposite side of the Rally to Restore Sanity. In addition to David Broder’s call for a war to stimulate the economy, Fred Hiatt, the paper’s editorial page editor, demanded that President Obama lie to the American people.
In an article calling on President Obama to show leadership, Hiatt lists at the top of things that Obama would do if he were acting as a leader:
“He would tell Democrats that Social Security will go broke without reform.” Of course this is not true. According to the Congressional Budget Office the program is fully solvent for the next 29 years with no changes whatsoever and with changes no larger than were put in place by the Greenspan commission in 1983 it can be kept solvent in the 22nd century.
Hiatt also complained that Obama has demonized business. This apparently stems from the difficulty of getting information in distant downturn Washington. Hiatt is apparently unaware of the fact that even as unemployment remains at near double-digit levels, corporate profits have returned to their pre-recession peak. In other words, business is doing just great under President Obama’s leadership, even he has occasionally said some nasty things about them.
The column also included the bizarre assertion that: “unchecked, deficits will depress Americans’ standard of living deficits threaten the country’s standard of living.” Of course by far the biggest threat to Americans’ standard of living is the near double-digit unemployment that the country is now experiencing. The deficits being run today impose zero burden on the country since they harness resources that would otherwise be idle.
Over the long-term, the deficit problem is simply the problem of a broken U.S. health care system as every policy analyst knows. For some reason the Washington Post is determined to hide this simple fact.
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