Topic: CNSNews.com
Last week, we detailed how CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey fretted about the rising federal budget deficit and debt while failing to mention the fact that a Republican-promoted, Trump-signed tax cut played a big role in increasing the deficit this year.
This was followed by an Oct. 17 article by Susan Jones that was only slightly less dishonest in approaching the subject. Jones uncritically let Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spread the blame for the deficits, even though it's his party that's currently in control of the White House and Congress:
The total national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars in Fiscal 2018, reaching $21.5 trillion at the end of September; and the FY '18 budget deficit was almost $779 billion.
Although the situation is "very disturbing," it cannot be blamed on Republicans alone, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Bloomberg News on Tuesday:
It's driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular – Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. That's 70 percent of what we spend every year. The subject we were just discussing, the funding of the government, is about 30 percent of what we spend.There's been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we'll get serious about this. We haven't been yet.McConnell said the opportunity for entitlement reform existed during the Obama years, when for six of those years, Republicans controlled either one or both chambers of Congress.
"I talked to President Obama about it a number of times," McConnell said. "It would have been the perfect time to do it. Think of Reagan and Tip O'Neill coming together in the early 80s to raise the age for Social Security. It took it out of the political arena and made it possible for it to be successful... unfortunately, it was not achieved."
Democrats blame the Republican tax cuts for ballooning the FY 2018 deficit, and they consistently resist any attempt to trim entitlements.
In fact, there are three main drivers of the current deficit: The Trump tax cut, military spending and entitlement spending.
Also, note how Jones framed the idea that the Trump tax cuts blew a hole in the deficit as a partisan debate by complain that it's what Democrats say rather than an undisputed fact. Well played, Susan.
