Washington Post Notes Damage Done By Senate “Centrists” Only When It’s Too Late
The Washington Post has a decent article by Lori Montgomery making the point that the changes Senate “centrists” made to economic recovery legislation will make the package much more ineffective, costing hundreds of thousands of people their jobs. But as Jon Chait observes it would have been nice of them to make this point back when it could have made a difference:
What frustrates me is that the Post didn’t write this when it could have made a difference. It’s possible that none of the economists the Post consulted were able to make models before today. But I suspect that the story fell victim to the conventions of objectivity. Writing a story that says, “Centrist Changes Hurt Job Growth, Economists Agree” would be partisan.Writing it after the bill is done, and in a context that downplays the specific actors responsible for the changes, is the kind of thing newspapers can do without feeling like they’re being “biased.”
Of course one can’t say for sure why the Post was so slow, but surely inability to model in a timely manner can’t have been to blame. Will Straw published an analysis for CAP on February 10 that had this conclusion. Paul Krugman had similar figures at about the same time.
It’s also worth saying that the “centrists” aren’t the only ones to blame. There are dozens of Senate conservatives who could have said “I don’t believe in the idea of Keynesian stimulus, but as long as you guys want to do a Keynesian stimulus you may as well do one properly, thus even though I’ll vote ‘no’ on the final bill I’ll agree to vote ‘yes’ on cloture if you undue the damage done by Sens. Specter, Collins, Snowe, and Nelson.”
25 Responses to “Washington Post Notes Damage Done By Senate “Centrists” Only When It’s Too Late”
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February 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Isn’t it CAP’s job to peddle their “studies” to lazy reporters at places like the Post in the hopes of getting them published verbatim? The fact that CAP published just such an analysis and the Post didn’t is a sign that CAP isn’t doing a very good job.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
There are dozens of Senate conservatives who could have said “I don’t believe in the idea of Keynesian stimulus, but as long as you guys want to do a Keynesian stimulus you may as well do one properly
That’s a weird thought. If you don’t believe in Keynesian stimulus, then increasing the size of the attempted stimulus makes it worse, not better.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
They timed it this way in order to preserve their reputation as a “liberal” newspaper while never actually doing anything to advance a liberal agenda.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
But it doesn’t make any sense for Senate conservatives to have suggested doing a Keynesian stimulus right. It seems the G.O.P.’s plan was to sabotage the bill, and then vote against it so they could say “I told you so” when it didn’t work. Which makes a lot of sense because I don’t see any incentive for them to have tried anything else. You could say they have a moral obligation to do the right thing, but when has that ever weighed on their minds?
February 13th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
In a similar manner, today’s New York Times published an article (not from Krugman
saying that basically if we follow the similarities with Japan we are being way too passive in our stimulus. Oh well, lets hope the $500MM gets something started.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
As #3 points out, now is actually the ideal time for the Washington Post to print an article whose main thrust is at odds with what the paper’s leadership wants.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I sure (just sure, I tell ya!) that there’s absolutely no correlation whatsoever between the output of economic models and the ideologies of the modelers.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
1) As I’ve noted here before, the New York Times and Washington Post promote the conservative narrative during times when decisions are being discussed — and then cover their asses by publishing the liberal arguments. But only after it’s too late to make any difference.
Kinda like Pinch Salzburger beginning to wonder if maybe there were NO WMDs in IRaq after all — but only after 150,000 US soldiers were already stuck in deep shit.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
This is an old, old game I’ve seen played with so many issues. The most memorable in recent years was certainly the “Buh we got go war NOW! / Oops evrywun knew they wuz no WMD’s”.
February 13th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
I;ve seen you Krugman and Angry Bear link that CAP piece several times now.
Re this part:
Why did they use the highest end estimate (3.68 million) for the overall job creation? (the CBO used 1.2 – 3.6 million for overall creation). It seems to me they took a methodologically sound method of determining the % difference in job creation between the two bills, but then applied that percentage to a potentionally inflated base number to yield the numerical job difference*. What I am missing?
* which keeps on changing
This post: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/job_creation_comparison.html
has the difference of 430K- 538K
This post:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/senate_house_job_numbers.html
has the difference of 343K – 444K
So we’ve gone from Krugman’s 600K to 500K to now 400K. (fwiw, the lower end of the last band seems to be a better ballpark estimate)
February 13th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Um, FWIW 60 cloture votes wouldn’t have cut it. Paygo rules mean that this bill needs 60 actual yes votes to pass.
February 13th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Why would you say “more ineffective” instead of “less effective”? I understand the general Yglesian cynicism. But you do think the stimulus is a good thing, yeah?
February 13th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
A million years ago (1982), a New York Times reporter named Ray Bonner reported on an El Salvadoran army massacre of a civilian village, and Elliot Abrams and the Ambassador screamed about it so the NYT kicked Bonner to the business beat because keeping the hawks and the right wing nut squad was more important than the truth.
A decade later anthropologists exhuming the decayed remains verified Bonner’s reporting, but Reagan’s death squad democrats had long done their dirty work, so the NYT did its job, helping Reagan kill Central Americans when it mattered, correcting the record afterwards when they were dead.
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