David Gregory Is A WingNut

First I want you to watch the video and pay attention primarily to the statements that David Gregory makes and the questions that he asks. Then skip down to my commentary under the video.

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Did you notice anything curious about David Gregory's framing of President Obama's budget? I sure did. Now setting aside for a moment that you had basically 3 Republicans on to talk about the budget when you consider the fact that Harold Ford Jr is the President of the DLC ie the Blue Dogs ie Republicans with a D in front of their names, the fact that every single talking point from the "moderator" David Gregory is just ridiculous and egregious. Look I am all for a debate on the merits of President Obama's budget, but how is this in anyway a fair or balanced look at it? So maybe I am just overreacting right? Ok lets take away all of the invited pundits who you would imagine are going to be partisan and focus solely on Gregory's words.

MR. GREGORY: We are back and we are joined now by Harold Ford Jr., Joe Scarborough, Dee Dee Myers and Mike Murphy.

Welcome, all of you.

Well, here it is. It's not a, a big document for $3.6 trillion, but it is a significant document. "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise." And this is no ordinary budget. This is how David Leonhardt described it in The New York Times this week: "The budget that President Obama proposed is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. ... More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years."

Joe Scarborough, tax increases and a real focus on, if you like, wealth transfer from the wealthy to the middle class.

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MR. GREGORY: But, but, Mike Murphy, there is a fundamental shift here in the approach that Washington has basically been governed by for 30 years.

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MR. GREGORY: It's a redefinition of government's role.

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MR. GREGORY: Let's break down some of the, the tax increases from more of a conservative point of view, as reported by the New York--excuse me, by the LA Times this week. "Brian Riedl," the coverage--the article points out, "a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, says `Obama's plan amounts to an unfair redistribution of the tax burden.' He said that the top 20 percent of taxpayers now pay 80 percent of all taxes collected by the government. And 40 percent of households pay no income tax. Under President Obama's plan, he said, the top 20 percent of tax filers would pay 90 percent of all taxes, and the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50 percent."

The question, Dee Dee, is in this kind of economic crisis--the Obama administration says there's no tax increases till 2011; nevertheless, is this what you do in the middle of a recession?

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MR. GREGORY: Yeah. I don't know that there--anybody's saying there'd be robust growth by that point.

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MR. GREGORY: Let me, let me get in here. I want to, I want to challenge another assertion in this budget, and that is that the president has said that he has identified $2 trillion in spending that he will cut back. He will cut $2 trillion in programs. Again, the LA Times reported this week, is that really going to happen? This is the piece: "For all the talk of fiscal responsibility, Congress is not ready to mend its free-spending ways. Exhibit A: The House passed a huge spending bill left over from the last year that increased expenditures by 8 percent. And it's laden with thousands of pet projects." The president's not happy about that, by the way.

Here's Judd Gregg, the senator from New Hampshire--was going to be Commerce secretary, decided he didn't agree with the president well enough. He says this: "The $2 trillion in savings touted by the president is a hollow number based on tax increases and reduced war funding. Where is the spending restraint? Instead, government spending continues to grow and expand, while the economy continues to suffer."

Dee Dee, in this budget, $600 billion as a down payment to get to that goal of universal health care that was first initiated under President Clinton's administration.

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MR. GREGORY: Where--but here--where are the cuts? Where are the cuts? We have seen in the stimulus bill, people in the White House will acknowledge that the appropriators, the Democrats in--especially on the House side wrote some of the spending into the stimulus bill. It got away from the White House. We have now an omnibus spending bill that appears to have gotten away from the White House. Can he get these cuts of $2 trillion?

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MR. GREGORY: Harold, the deficit, the debt picture, talking about a reality check here, this is how The Washington Post reports in terms of what we're looking at: "The numbers in the new budget are unlike anything the country and its elected leadership are used to dealing with. Not only will the current deficit reach $1.75 trillion," that's 12 percent of GDP, "next year's will also top a trillion dollars and the deficits will remain about $500 billion until fiscal year 2019." Will Congress simply choke on the size of those numbers? The promise is to cut the deficit in half by the end of the first term. Realistic?

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MR. GREGORY: I want, I want to talk about the Republicans.

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MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about Republicans, because one of the, the--and Stephen Hayes does it in the Weekly Standard, points out what the strategy has been so far for Republicans, which is to not go after President Obama specifically. He writes, "This has been the Republican strategy since Obama took office: Refrain from criticizing the president directly, praise his stated desire for bipartisanship; trash congressional Democrats as irresponsibly liberal and poor stewards of taxpayer dollars; offer alternative solutions to the country's problems even if the media pay them no attention. The reasons for doing this are plain. The country was broadly enthusiastic about Obama's inauguration, and his popularity remains high." How high, you ask? Well, look at the numbers. New Washington Post/ABC News poll, a 68 percent approval rating. The president's got some juice right now. But here was Rush Limbaugh at the CPAC conference. This was the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this week. Here's what he had to say about the president.

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MR. GREGORY: The question, Mike Murphy, is are these principled objections, ideological differences about the role of government? Or is this calculation? And, and are Republicans open to the idea of hey, this is--as Warren Buffett said, this is Pearl Harbor for the economy. This is like during the Iraq war, Americans have to come together here of all parties and all stripes.

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MR. GREGORY: And as--Harold, do you agree with that? Do you think he--it appeared that he'd more centrist. Has he gone left with this budget, particularly?

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MR. GREGORY: I want to talk about the government's role in bailing out this economy. And we keep a running tab here of federal bailout and stimulus spending since February of 2008. And I want to put it on the screen and, and have everybody absorb this. The total is $2.3 trillion. Let's go through it. The first stimulus in February of 2008 was $168 billion, money for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and all, all of which has been drawn down, including the latest $400 billion. AIG, the insurance company, $150 billion, probably more to come. The financial bailout, both ends of it--$350, $350--$700 billion, some of that for the auto bailout. Bank of America and Citi got $45 billion each, now the government's going to come in and take 40 percent of Citi. The Obama stimulus package, $787 billion. The housing plan, $75 billion. That's $2.3 trillion. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars additional in this document for additional bailout money for the banks.

Meantime, what metric do we have to see how people--what people think of that government intervention? The Dow is one metric. It closed on Friday at its lowest level since 1997, just over 7,000.

Harold, has the president yet done a good job persuading Americans to be confident about the future of this economy?

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MR. GREGORY: ...I just want ask this question, which is--and I think it's a fundamental question. If you look at those numbers of how much the government's spending, will the American people continue to support this president even if he fails in some of these efforts to revive the economy?

Now literally other than some "Mmm Hmms" and some one word answers, this was the meat of David Gregory's "moderation today. So lets go from the top. He opens up with a line from the New York Times about the budget that isn't very damning, but then he prefaces his question to Joe Scarborough with an alley oop lob pass referring to redistributing wealth. Helluva way to start off the segment. But it only gets worse from there. He references Judd Gregg, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes and Brien Riedl, all conservatives, during the segment. He doesn't reference even one Democrat, let alone a liberal or progressive during the whole frikkin discussion. He goes on to repeat a Republican talking point about the earmarks in the omnibus bill with out noting that 40% of those earmarks came from Republicans and all together the earmarks made up less than 1% of the budget. After that he comes with the zombie lie that the House Democrats "hijacked" the stimulus bill. And then he goes on to use every negative Republican term to describe spending by the government when talking about President Obama's agenda. I mean really why even worry about having representation from the Republicans on Meet The Press when the "moderator" will do the job for them? I don't know what in the hell possessed NBC to give David Gregory this post in the first place but hopefully somebody will rectify this sooner rather than later. There simply is no justification for this kind of slanted coverage.