Today the New York Times (1/18/11) reports a big scoop.

A "Tea Party commission" convened  by Freedom Works is set to announce its crowd-sourced $6 trillion debt reduction plan--"A copy of the preliminary findings was provided to the New York Times," Kate Zernike reports.

The story's second paragraph critiques the plan from the right for not doing enough about Social Security and Medicare, which Zernike asserts "are two of the biggest contributors to the nation's deficit." This is not true, especially when it comes to Social Security--but corporate media prefer to have discussions of the deficit that bash Social Security.

The larger problem is why this proposal is being covered at all. Even Zernike's account suggests that it doesn't really add up:

FreedomWorks says that repealing the healthcare legislation would cut $1.2 trillion, but the Congressional Budget Office has projected that repealing the legislation would actually increase the deficit by $210 billion over the next 10 years.

It's useful to recall how the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was treated by outlets like the New York Times. This was a serious plan put forward by legislators and endorsed by several high-profile economists.  And it couldn't get into the news section of the New York Times. But this thing can.

The convention in mainstream journalism is that the new stories give you the facts, and the columnists give you their opinions (hopefully backed by facts). But in the coverage over the debt ceiling and budget debates sometimes you're better off heading straight to the columns. Today offers a good example. In the Washington Post (7/15/11), Ezra Klein lays out the political dynamic that is rarely explained. As Klein writes, the White House has decided to

offer Republicans a deal that is not only much farther to the right than anyone had predicted, but also much farther to the right than most realize. In addition to the rise in the Medicare eligibility age and the cuts to Social Security and the minimal amount of revenue, it would cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion, which is an absolutely massive attack on that category of spending.

In the New York Times (7/15/11), Paul Krugman writes:

President Obama has made it clear that he's willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As the Times's Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

The conventional coverage--which pits Obama's offer against Republican intransigence--tends to gloss over these facts. The front-page article in the Times today by Jackie Calmes explains the debate as being between Obama's desire to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the deficit, while Republicans prefer "smaller government" and lower taxes. It quotes Sen. John McCain saying that the  "president keeps talking about spending more money"--with no explanation that Obama is actually proposing to reduce non-security domestic federal spending as a percentage of GDP to its lowest level in 50 years.

These are the limits in the media debate. The fact that the public would seem to prefer an entirely different type of budget deal is a non-factor. The fact that such plans exist--the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, for instance--is all but ignored by the corporate media. Senate Democrats have floated a similar plan.  A competent press corps would cover these proposals, if only for the sake of telling citizens that such options are available--that reducing the long-term deficit is possible without slashing spending on  programs that people support.

But the media would much prefer a budget debate that pits Obama's Republican-leaning plan against the Republicans who oppose that plan.

"Tea Party Plans Its Own Debt Panel" reads a headline in today's New York Times (6/27/11), where reporter Kate Zernike described efforts by the well-financed right-wing lobbying group FreedomWorks to organize a debt commission that will come up with yet another right-wing fiscal blueprint.

They don't have a plan yet--they're merely talking about having meetings that would produce a plan: "It aims to have proposals ready by January, when the presidential campaign will draw even more attention to economic proposals."

Well, they're off to a good start in the Drawing Attention department. Remember, the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was never covered in a hard news story in the Times (Extra!, 6/11).

Apparently there is a need for another Paul Ryan-type budget plan. Just talking about organizing to come up with one is good enough to score a New York Times story.

The paper didn't cover the People's Budget when it came out--which was, you know, an actual thing, not a series of committee meetings that might produce something someday.

New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a piece on Sunday (5/15/11) that tried to advance the argument that $250,000 actually isn't that much money to make in a year. The complaint is that politicians who advocate raising tax rates on income above $250,000 have chosen an arbitrary dividing line--above it you're rich, and you'll be taxed accordingly.

Articles like this are annoying for obvious reasons--we're being asked to listen to wealthy people complain that they're not that wealthy, once you factor in the private school tuition and a hefty mortgage. But they often mislead in other areas--especially when it comes to how much wealthy people pay in taxes. Ross Sorkin mentions a Manhattan father of two with a household income of $262,000 who sees his tax bill potentially going up, and he says, "I don't understand why people like us are lumped in with millionaires and billionaires."

As Dean Baker points out, anyone who understands marginal tax rates should know that someone making slightly more than $250,000 would pay a higher rate only on that income above that amount--which, in this case, would amount to a few hundreds dollars at most in extra taxes.

The article goes on to discuss tax policy and budget deficits, and Ross Sorkin makes this point:

much of the income of the country's wealthiest people comes from investments, which is taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of just 15 percent.

So far, neither Democrats nor Republicans dare talk about raising the long-term capital gains tax out of fear that it would reduce crucial investments that could produce jobs.

No one talks about raising capital gains tax rates? The Congressional Progressive Caucus's blueprint, the People's Budget, offers an array of options for raising revenues, including this:

Tax capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income: This policy would eliminate the preferentially low rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends (currently 15 percent) and again tax all capital income as ordinary income under the marginal tax rate structure. The tax rate on long-term capital gains is scheduled to rise to 20 percent in 2013 and dividends are scheduled to be taxed again as ordinary income.

So someone's talking about it after all.

Part of Ross Sorkin's point is that more tax brackets would help clarify the difference between earning a mere $250,000 or, say, many millions of dollars. A fine idea--and also part of the People's Budget. If reporters gave it more attention, they might discover that the answers are staring them in the face.

I saw a press release yesterday announcing that Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.) were introducing a single-payer healthcare bill in both houses of Congress. Unless there was a drastic change in the corporate media, this news wasn't going to be, well, news.

And it hasn't been so far. There were mentions in independent outlets like Democracy Now!, GritTV and the Nation. But in the corporate media, next to nothing-- except for one brief mention on CNN, thanks to Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel:

VANDEN HEUVEL: The progressive caucus, which put out a people's budget which is fair, did not get attention because the media slighted it and marginalized it. That is a mainstream budget.

SPITZER: One second, you'll get your turn.

VANDEN HEUVEL: No, but I do think, when Bernie Sanders and McDermott put forth a Medicare-for-all, that is a majority position.

The single-payer bill and the People's Budget will likely suffer the same media fate--marginalized by the Beltway elites, despite the fact that they represent policies that are broadly popular.

Maybe media would behave differently if someone as serious, wonky and handsome as Paul Ryan was holding the press conference.