Limbaugh's flawed budget analogy (9/5)

By Bryan Keefer

Does a single state’s budget deficit explain away the effect of the Bush tax cut on the federal budget? That’s what radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh would have you believe.

On Tuesday, Limbaugh, citing a Washington Post story on Maryland’s anticipated $1 billion budget shortfall, suggested that tax cuts had nothing to do with the federal budget deficit because Maryland’s problems were not caused by tax cuts (Windows Media Audio, part 1 and part 2):

The liberal lie of 2002 is that the tax cut in America, the Bush tax cut, is causing this new wave of budget deficits, right. Maryland faces a billion-dollar budget deficit. They haven’t cut taxes, so how can this be? …

Maryland has a billion dollar deficit, and the Democrats say the [federal] deficit’s been caused by the Bush tax cut. The Bush tax cuts so far equal $40 billion dollars. . . . Maryland has a one billion dollar deficit, but they haven’t had a tax cut, so what explains the deficit in Maryland? If tax cuts equal deficits, and there haven’t been tax cuts in Maryland, why the deficit? …

The reason there are deficits is that the doors to the Treasury have been open for a year and a half now and people in both parties have been spending money faster than they can print it. That’s the reason we have a deficit.

This argument makes little sense. Aside from ignoring that fact that $41 billion in federal tax cuts this year certainly did contribute to the $165 billion deficit, Limbaugh’s reasoning - Maryland didn’t cut taxes but has a budget deficit, therefore tax cuts never cause budget deficits - is a ridiculous generalization from a single case. According to his logic, reduced revenues from tax cuts simply can’t affect a state’s budget, a claim that is obviously false.

Moreover, while Limbaugh is right that the Bush tax cut is only one of many causes of the federal deficit this year, it is the single largest cause of the long-term deterioration of the federal budget picture. As the respected liberal analysts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

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Related links:
-Spinsanity's coverage of Rush Limbaugh

9/5/2002 03:46:03 PM EST |

The big NEA-Sept. 11 lie (9/5)

How the Washington Times helped create a myth about the teachers' union and Sept. 11
By Brendan Nyhan
[First published on Salon.com]

Over the last few weeks, the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, has been widely denounced for supposedly calling on educators not to blame the Sept. 11 attacks on al-Qaida. But this is a manufactured falsehood created by a kind of assembly line for political myths. The story is familiar: A distorted claim is fed into the echo chamber, where it is increasingly twisted as it is repeated over and over until it becomes conventional wisdom.

9/5/2002 07:59:02 AM EST |

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