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| Photo illustration by Adrian Palomo. |
Led by Republican Paul Ryan (with rising party star Scott Walker), Wisconsin may be the leading state when it comes to presenting a conservative alternative to the philosophy of President Barack Obama. But weirdly enough, we may be getting fewer details of the debate than if we lived elsewhere.
The release of Ryan’s plan to reduce the federal deficit got front page treatment in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the coverage was all about Ryan and his ideas, and it was mostly quite flattering. As the story’s second graph put it: “‘This is not a budget. This is a cause,’ Ryan said Tuesday in language that underscored the ambition of his proposal.”
Yet two days later, when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis showed Ryan’s plan would drastically hike costs for those on Medicare, forcing them to pay 68 percent of the costs of coverage, the JS front-page story referred to Ryan’s plan as a “GOP budget proposal.” You had to go to the jump page inside to learn that Ryan actually had anything to do with his much heralded “cause” of two days earlier. (I would refer readers to this story online, but it doesn’t come up; its headline in print was “GOP plan raises retiree costs.”)
Then came the release of Obama’s plan, and the coverage got even worse. The JS ran a front-page story compiled from the McClatchy News Service, Associated Press and New York Times, but left out the most powerful quotes from these wire service stories.
For instance: “Some will argue we shouldn’t even consider raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more. I don’t need another tax cut. Warren Buffet doesn’t need another tax cut.”
Or this: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”
Yet, even as it left out the money quotes from the president, the story made sure to include a long quote from Ryan (which by the way, wasn’t included in the McClatchy, AP and NYT stories on Obama’s speech) condemning the speech as “excessively partisan” and “dramatically inaccurate.” The irony is that Ryan’s quote about excessive partisanship made little sense because the JS story had left out Obama’s most ringing phrases – phrases which some commentators noted were aimed dead at Ryan.
The JS story on the release of Ryan’s plan, by the way, ran 39 graphs; Obama’s plan got only 24. Is there any publication in the nation that would give a congressman so much more ink than the president?
If you’re looking for JS editors putting their thumbs on the scale, it always shows most in how they run syndicated stories, where they can pick and choose which graphs to run from the Times or AP, and where there is no on-staff reporter to complain about how a story has been truncated.
Obama’s proposal, as the stories noted, was vague as to what spending cuts he envisioned. But so was Ryan’s plan, much lauded for its highly “serious” nature. As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis noted, the Ryan proposal “specifies a path for all other spending (besides Medicare and Medicaid) … to decline sharply as a share of GDP – from 12 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2022 and 3.5 percent by 2050” but “does not specify the changes to government programs that might … produce that path.”
Similarly, Ryan’s plan projects that federal revenue will magically raise from 15 percent of Gross Domestic Product to 19 percent by 2029 with “no specifications of particular revenue that would generate that path.”
In short, both Ryan and Obama have produced sketchy road maps lacking detail. What we do know is that Obama would cut more deeply into military spending (a cut of $400 billion over 12 years) while Ryan would slash Medicare and Medicaid coverage. Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicaid into flexible block grants to the states would “substantially” reduce funding, the CBO noted, requiring states to “decrease payments to Medicaid providers, reduce eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries” or make up the difference with state taxes.
The other thing we know is that Obama would roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $1 million annually. At a time when the gap in wealth between the richest and poorest Americans is bigger than it has been in the last 100 years, that idea has generated the most ringing phrases from the President. To quote another one you didn’t read in the state’s largest newspaper, “they want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay more than $6,000 more in health costs? That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I am president.”
Slapping Down Joe Rice
Somebody up there doesn’t like Milwaukee County Supervisor Joe Rice. It is common courtesy when a legislative body reduces the number of districts that it treads very carefully, consulting all before deciding to change a district.
In the case of the Milwaukee County Board, two incumbents intend to retire: board chair Lee Holloway and supervisor Lynne De Bruin. Thus it would be possible to reduce the board from 19 members to 17 by simply absorbing the districts they represent.
Instead, a proposed county staff plan reduced the number of districts by just one – to 18 – without touching the districts of the retiring supervisors and instead eliminating Rice’s district. Rice condemned it as a “backroom, backdoor deal,” but it would appear that everyone but Rice was in that back room. County board analyst Glenn Bultman admitted, when questioned by Rice, that he took into account the desires of the two supervisors, Gerry Broderick and Theo Lipscomb, who would absorb most of Rice’s district. Bultman wouldn’t have created a plan so hostile to one supervisor without clear backing from the board.
In short, this appears to be a deliberate move to screw Rice out of his seat. Why?
One reason might be that Rice has been a vocal champion of drastically downsizing the board, to as few as nine members. But county supervisor Paul Cesarz has suggested a similar reduction, and the board didn’t target him.
Another possibility is that Rice has been the most vocal about the need to downsize, writing an op-ed that ran in the Journal Sentinel. But somehow, that doesn’t seem like enough justification for something so mean-spirited as this.
No, my guess is that his colleagues really hate Rice. He must have so antagonized them in the past that they seized on this opportunity to slap him down. I can’t recall a more nasty example of a legislative body going after one of their own.
The Buzz
-Democrats are pushing the idea of Russ Feingold as candidate should Gov. Scott Walker be recalled a year from now. That’s really premature and also an unlikely choice: Feingold is the ultimate lone wolf, the perfect personality for a maverick senator, but not the sort of person you need to be a good administrator and bring the party together.
-Why is Republican congressman Sean Duffy moaning about his finances and selling his house? News Buzz reports.
-Will the state take over some local governments and just how is that getting covered? Pressroom Buzz reports.
-And could the Bucks have gotten Zach Randolph and his 20 points and 10 rebounds a game? Sports Nut has the inside story.
