420 Special report: Do you understand? PART 1—NUMBERS, PLEASE

 (permalink): Do you understand Obama’s budget plan? How about the Ryan plan, the courageoushonestbravesincere plan adopted by House Republicans?

Frankly, we don’t understand those plans, not even a little bit. For starters, consider the way these plans have been described by our two of our biggest newspapers.

Last Monday, the Washington Post described the dueling plans in a front-page news report. Zachary Goldfarb discussed the way the plans would reduce future deficits:

GOLDFARB (4/18/11): Obama's upcoming trips, which also include a visit to Reno, Nev., come after the unveiling last week of his plan to reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes. By reducing the annual budget, the government would slow the growth of the nation's debt over time.

House Republicans passed a budget Friday that would reduce the federal deficit by $4.4 trillion in 10 years with program cuts alone. No Democrats voted for the plan.

Obama’s plan would “reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years”—or at least, that was its intention. According to Goldfarb, Ryan’s plan actually would “reduce the federal deficit by $4.4 trillion in 10 years.” Goldfarb’s language is a bit clumsy in certain ways, but this has been the Washington Post’s standard account of the way these plans would reduce future deficits—to the extent that the Post has tried to quantify this matter. (In an April 14 front-page report, Lori Montgomery said the same thing, tossing in an additional detail: “The House GOP plan would cut deficits by about $4.4 trillion over a decade. Obama proposed to reduce borrowing by $4 trillion over 12 years, including $3 trillion over the next 10 years.”)

Obama’s budget speech had occurred on April 13.

Obama’s plan would reduce federal deficits by $4 trillion over 12 years. Ryan’s plan would reduce federal deficits by $4.4 trillion over 10 years. So the Washington Post has said. The New York Times has said the same thing in its own reporting—to the extent that our greatest newspaper has quantified this matter at all.

On April 14, Mark Landler did the New York Times front-page report about Obama’s speech. He used the same numbers the Post has used, though he attributed at least one of these numbers to Obama himself:

LANDLER (4/14/11): Mr. Obama said his proposal would cut federal budget deficits by a cumulative $4 trillion over 12 years, compared with a deficit reduction of $4.4 trillion over 10 years in the Republican plan.

Landler correctly quoted Obama’s claim about his own plan’s deficit reduction. The claim that Republicans would reduce future deficits by $4.4 trillion came from somewhere else. (For the relevant text from Obama’s speech, see below.)

But uh-oh! Strange as it seems, we can find no other place where the New York Times has tried to report the amount of deficit reduction sought or produced by these plans. An array of contradictory numbers have appeared in various editorials and opinion columns (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/18/11). But nowhere has our greatest newspaper attempted to report the amount of deficit reduction contemplated by these plans.

What is the closest the Times has come? On April 18, John Harwood included the following passage in a front-page analysis piece. In context, it’s fairly clear that the term “both sides” means “Republican andDemocratic leaders.” Or something like that:

HARWOOD (4/18/11): Already, both sides have backed similar long-term goals of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, the level advanced by Mr. Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission.

Strange as it seems, that is the closest the Times has come to reporting the amount of deficit reduction proposed by, or likely to occur under, the two major plans.

We’ll leave this matter right here for today—though this doesn’t even begin to explain the source of our greatest confusion. Tomorrow, we’ll outline an even more potent source of incomprehension. But for today, please note this one striking fact about the way these budget plans have been covered:

These plans are wholly premised on the need for deficit reduction. But in our most important newspaper, there has been virtually no attempt to report the amount of deficit reduction these dueling plans might produce. More than two weeks after Ryan’s courageoussincerehonest plan appeared, the Times has made almost no attempt to report how much reduction it might achieve. Regarding the Obama plan, the Times has only quoted the big round number used by Obama himself.

How much deficit reduction would be achieved by these dueling plans? Sorry! You live in a very primitive culture—a culture whose avatars only pretend to attend to facts and information.

Numbers, please! So the analysts cry. But your culture doesn’t run on such fuel.

What Obama said: Regarding those numbers, this is what Obama said in his budget speech:

OBAMA (4/13/11): Now, to their credit, one vision has been presented and championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party's presidential candidates. It's a plan that aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

[…]

So today, I'm proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years.

That’s what Obama said the Ryan plan “aims to” do. Would either plan achieve its goal? So far, the New York Times has made little attempt to offer any numbers.