By Ben Fritz
The Bush administration's inability to tell the truth about the relationship between tax cuts and deficits continues to amaze.
On Sunday it was Vice President Cheney who dissembled about the impact of the tax cuts on the federal budget deficit and the relative size of the deficit.
Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," the Vice President said, "Tax cuts accounted for only about 25 percent of the deficit." This statement was left unchallenged by host Tim Russert. But as we have previously observed when President Bush made the same claim, tax cuts actually account for 39 percent of the 2003 deficit according to figures from the White House's own Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Tax cuts do account for 25 percent of the difference between projections of a federal budget surplus in April 2001 and current deficit projections, but that's not the same thing.
Cheney also made a second misstatement about the deficit. "The deficit that we're running today, after we get the approval of the $87 billion, will still be less as a percentage of our total capacity to pay for it, our total economic activity in this country, than it was back in the '80s or the deficits we ran in the '90s. We're still about 4.7 percent of our total GDP," the Vice President said. This is incorrect, however, according to historical tables provided in OMB's 2004 budget. In fact, while the deficit did exceed 4.7 percent of GDP from 1983 through 1986, the highest it got in the 1990s was exactly 4.7 percent in 1992.
Moreover, as the Washington Post noted, Cheney also incorrectly that "We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM." But Kay never headed UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Committee that conducted weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991 through 1998. For one year, he was chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which handled nuclear weapons investigations for UNSCOM.
Finally, many commentators have jumped on Cheney's statement that "We don't know" whether Saddam Hussein was connected to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While technically correct, Cheney failed to provide any convincing evidence indicating that Hussein may have played a role save for a possible meeting between one of the attackers and an Iraqi intelligence official. According to Cheney, "we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it." The Post also cast doubt on this assertion, noting that FBI and CIA investigations found such a meeting doubtful.
The Bush administration hasn't presented any other evidence to back up a connection between Iraq and 9/11, even though the President has implied such a connection exists on many occasions. Saying "we don't know" implies that it is just as likely true as untrue. But Cheney should have more forthrightly admitted there simply isn't any positive evidence connecting Saddam and 9/11.
Update 9/18 2:30 AM: President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have both stated recently that Iraq had no connection to the terrorist attacks. As this Washington Post article reports, Bush stated Wednesday, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks." And speaking on ABC's "Nightline," Rice said, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."
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Related links:
-Spinsanity on tax and budget issues
-Spinsanity on Iraq
A new Vanity Fair article by Craig Unger on the evacuation of Bin Laden family members from the US in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks is being misinterpreted by a number of pundits, reporters and politicians.
Based on reporting by Unger and other journalists, it appears that one or more planes were allowed to enter US airspace and fly within the country to gather family members while commercial and civil aviation was grounded. Reportedly fearing retaliation, the Bin Ladens were then allowed to leave after apparently minimal questioning from the FBI. While controversy continues to surround the extent (or existence) of such questioning (see our previous post on the matter), another dispute surrounds the precise date that the Bin Ladens were allowed to leave the country and whether flights were still grounded at the time.
As the Snopes.com article on the controversy recounts, almost all investigative reports in the press, including Unger's, place the flights out of the country after the resumption of limited commercial and private aviation. Unger's article documents two flights leaving the US - from Boston's Logan International Airport on September 18th and 19th. Also, the New York Times reported one flight left on September 14. While the FBI has called the Times report "erroneous," such a date would still place the flight after the resumption of limited commercial and private traffic.
Unger clarified the issue during a Sept. 4 interview on CNN with Paula Zahn:
UNGER: In this case, they were spirited out of the country. And they were also given an extraordinary privilege, that is, this was a time in which American airspace was locked down. This required White House approval. This was a time in which the skies were as empty as they had been in 100 years since the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
FBI counterintelligence agents were not allowed to fly during this period, yet the Saudis were.
ZAHN: Well, help me with the timeline here, because it was on September 18, was one of the first flights out of the country, right?
UNGER: Right.
ZAHN: And we are told that there were other private planes that took off that day and there was other commercial traffic.
UNGER: Oh, they did. But the key is not when they left the country. The key is when they got into American airspace, which was locked down. And the first flight I was able to document was on September 13. At 10:57 a.m. on that day, the FAA put out a notice saying all private planes could not fly. And yet a Learjet took off from Tampa just a couple hours later and landed in Lexington, Kentucky. I spoke to two people who were on that plane.
ZAHN: But, once again, you don't have as big of a problem with the flight on September 18, when these family members finally left the country.
UNGER: The point isn't really when they left the country. It was that the entire process required White House approval...
This point has been pervasively mischaracterized. A September 2 UPI report based on Unger's article stated the following:
The Bin Laden family were granted extraordinary White House privileges to fly out of U.S. airspace following the attacks of Sept. 11th, 2001.
Former White House counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke told Vanity Fair the bin Laden family were granted extraordinary White House privileges to fly out of U.S. airspace following the attacks of Sept. 11th, 2001" (emphasis mine).
Clarke is quoted in the article as saying "I asked them [the FBI] if they had any objection to the entire event -- to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying." However, the rest of the article does not support this phrasing, nor have other reports provided substantial evidence supporting it. As such, asserting it to be true without substantial qualification is incorrect.
The next day, attributing his statements to a summary of the article from Vanity Fair, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a committee hearing that "The basic thrust of the article is that right after 9/11 when no one was allowed to fly that some special planes were able to spirit Saudis out of the country."
The quotation may have been originally mischaracterized in the Vanity Fair release Schumer drew on. During the Sept. 7 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert quoted the release as saying that "Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke tells Vanity Fair that the Bush administration decided to allow a group of Saudis to fly out of the U.S. just after September 11 - at a time when access to US airspace was still restricted and required special government approval." This phrasing misleadingly implies that the Saudis flew out of the country "when access to US airspace was still restricted."
Liberal opinion journalists quickly picked up the torch, with both Salon's Joe Conason [Salon Premium subscription or viewing of ad required] and Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer repeating Schumer's inaccurate charge on September 4 and 9, respectively.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) also repeated it on September 10 during a committee hearing, saying the piece described how "Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family to leave the United States at a time when virtually all air flights had been shut down after September 11, 2001."
And finally, on Sunday's edition of "Meet the Press," Russert further misstated reporting in the article, which is now on newsstands, in a question to Vice President Dick Cheney:
Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to leave our airspace and were never investigated by the FBI and that departure was approved by high-level administration figures. Do you know anything about that?
Again, Unger never documents that any Saudis were allowed to leave on the 11th, nor that all 140 did so by then. The earliest flight he documents took place within the US on the 13th, but the two he documents actually leaving the country took place on the 18th and 19th.
Our understanding of the evacuation of the Bin Laden family members is incomplete. However, the lack of available information increases the burden on journalists to be precise about what we do know, which currently does not include any flights leaving the country while commercial and private aviation were grounded on Sept. 11-13.
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Related links:
-Big Lies and little mistakes (Bryan Keefer, 9/9)
-More Scheer myth-spreading (Brendan Nyhan, 8/6)
-Spinsanity on Robert Scheer
-Spinsanity on the war on terrorism
Since the August 26 release of projections from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office forecasting a significant increase in the federal budget deficit, Bush administration officials have frequently touted a supposed plan to "cut the deficit in half" over the next 3-5 years. However, this supposed plan omits a number of costs the administration itself supports.
This spin point originated on July 15, when the White House Office of Management and Budget released its Mid-Session Review, which touts projections showing "the deficit is cut in half" by 2006. However, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has shown that this plan does not include spending and tax cuts supported by the administration. Specifically, it omits security and rebuilding costs in Afghanistan and Iraq after September 30, 2003, such as the $87 billion the President recently requested; funding for the Pentagon's "Future Year Defense Plan;" and tax policy changes required to prevent a dramatically larger percentage of taxpayers from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax as a result of Bush's tax cuts.
Nonetheless, during his press briefing on July 15, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "[O]ver the next few years, what you're going to see is that we're going to cut that deficit in half based on the projections that are being outlined later today." President Bush mentioned it during his radio address on July 19, during speeches on July 24 in Philadelphia and Michigan and during his July 30 press conference, where he stated unequivocally that "we have laid out a plan which shows that the deficit will be cut in half over the next five years."
After the CBO figures drew new attention to the deficit, the plan was reintroduced in Bush's August 30 radio address and has come into frequent use over the past two weeks. Bush touted it on September 4 and 5, McClellan mentioned it during a White House press briefing on September 2, OMB Director Josh Bolten mentioned it in a USA Today op-ed on September 5 and in a New York Times article on the deficit Sunday, and Vice President Dick Cheney touted it during an interview with Tim Russert on Sunday's edition of NBC's "Meet the Press."
Touting the effects of a budget plan that doesn't take into account major costs that the administration supports is the height of dishonesty. President Bush owes the public better.
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Related links:
-Spinsanity on President Bush
-Spinsanity on tax and budget issues