Journal pudge's Journal: Self-Contradiction 3
MONDAY, Feb. 5 (HealthDay News) -- President Bush's proposed $2.9 trillion federal budget, unveiled Monday, calls for health care spending cuts, including a major five-year reduction in Medicare expenditures to slow the program's annual growth rate from 6.5 percent to 5.6 percent.
It's not often you see a sentence in an article refute itself. No, there is no reduction in Medicare expenditures. There is a reduction of planned expenditures. But the actual expenditures are actually increasing.
Yes, you've heard this before. Some may think my bringing it up is tiresome. I say the media continuing to get it wrong is tiresome. NewsHour got it right tonight: Judy Woodruff called it "$91 billion worth of cuts in spending growth" and, whenever she mentioned the cuts, said they were cuts "from the growth." Frankly, I find the formulation about odd: I usually say cuts from projected spending, as a what exactly a "cut from growth" is, is not immediately clear; though it has the benefit of being more succinct.
Anyway, I love this budget because Senator Kent Conrad was criticizing it, so I know it must be good.
Well, OK, I'm being facetious. Conrad is right, actually: we need to balance the budget. Unfortunately, Conrad wants to do it by increasing taxes, which would be a cure worse than the disease. The fact is -- at least, as far as I am concerned, it's a fact, and I doubt anyone reading this will disagree with me -- the Republicans and the Democrats are screwing us by not cutting a lot of unnecessary spending out of the budget. Nothing new here.
there's no real cost for misinforming (Score:1)
Yup [slashdot.org]. Something very similar, at least. Journalists have been getting the meaning of "cut" wrong for as long as I can remember. But not really, they know what they're doing. Afterall, they have a party to try to swing elections for. If we have to have limits on campaign contributions, how about extending it to the news media? They have way more influence than a rich guy here and there. But that would never fly, because they'd be over their limit, since about the 70's. Maybe some
I had a relative run for office (Score:2)
My point is that likely, these people are just reprinting whatever some congressman's office hands them. If the congressman wants to spin a slower increase in total expenditure as a "cut", then the journalist can take the time to un-spin it, or just publish it and move to the next deadline.
Tiresome? Sure. Unexpected? Hardly.
It is an awesome idea to apply across the board (Score:2)
Sure, Mr. Bush. You can operate your war in Iraq with the same amount of funds that you requested in 2006, $72.4 billion. We'd just like to cut the $100 billion in growth that you requested. We're still funding the war, 70 freakin' billion dollars worth, just not the $100 billion in growth that you requested.
But you understand.