NYT Fearmongers Debt as GOP Holds Economy Hostage

Conor Smyth

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times (3/10/23), the economist and longtime Times columnist Paul Krugman gave readers “a pro tip”:

Anyone who makes alarmist claims about debt by talking about trillions of dollars as opposed to, say, percentages of gross domestic product, is engaged in scare tactics, not serious discussion.

It would be great if his own paper would listen to him.

Republican hostage-taking

Things you don't need to know about the debt, according to the New York Times (5/2/23): how big it is compared to the US economy, or to other nations' debt burdens.

Instead, the Times has been engaged in outright fearmongering over the size of the US federal debt over the past several months. This at the same time that the Republican Party has taken the economy hostage, in order to exact wildly unpopular cuts to government programs.

In a rerun of Obama-era fights, Republicans are using their majority in the House to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. As the Times (5/2/23) has acknowledged:

Lifting the debt limit does not actually authorize any new spending—in fact, it simply allows the United States to spend money on programs that have already been authorized by Congress.

Failing to raise the ceiling risks default, which could potentially bring economic disaster, and also appears to directly violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.”

In the midst of this political battle, with one party using unconstitutional methods and the threat of economic catastrophe to try to kick people off social programs, a responsible paper of record might want to avoid mindlessly promoting a key premise of the economic terrorists: that government debt is a serious problem that we should be very concerned about.

That’s a lot of money, huh?

For the New York Times (3/9/23), Joe Biden is trying to "recapture the more centrist identity that long defined him" by being "increasingly focused on deficit reduction."

But who said the Times was responsible? In April, over a third of the articles that the paper ran as part of its coverage of the political battle over the debt limit featured the scary raw number for the US federal debt: $31 trillion. Only one included reference to debt as a percentage of GDP. The story was similar in March, when five of 14 articles referenced the raw number or projections for that number, and only two articles mentioned the debt-to-GDP figure, or projections for that figure.

Some pieces that did not include the $31 trillion number nevertheless repeatedly alluded to the addition of trillions to the debt. In one case, the Times (3/9/23) described Biden as

cast[ing] himself as a new-generation Franklin D. Roosevelt pressing for a modern-day New Deal, with large-scale spending on climate change, social welfare programs and student debt relief that will add trillions of dollars to the national debt in years to come.

In another (3/31/23), it referenced

the tax cuts signed by President Donald J. Trump in 2017, which his administration said would pay for themselves, but which independent evidence showed added trillions to the national debt.

No context was provided for what “trillions” more in debt actually means. Basically all the reader gets is, That’s a lot of money, huh?--plus the insinuation, Probably not great, don’t you think? This approach may balance both sides—Hey, they’re both blowing a hole in the budget!—but it’s far from Krugman’s benchmark for responsible reporting.

‘No good, hard governance anymore’

The New York Times (4/18/23) is nostalgic for the days when Republicans asserted that "benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare [are] absolutely vital to the nation’s future."

When additional context was added, it was not always helpful for anything other than inducing debt-phobia. One particularly egregious article (4/18/23) accompanied its mention of the $31 trillion figure with a warning of “a herd of elephants coming over the horizon,” with this herd represented in part by rising interest payments on the national debt. It noted that in the first half of the current fiscal year, “interest payments rose from $219 billion to $308 billion, a 41% leap that put debt servicing nearly on par with military spending.” Scary! (Maybe a little less scary when you learn that "nearly on par" means two-thirds as large as next year's proposed military budget.)

The piece, by Jonathan Weisman, was littered with debt-scolding, with the subhead reading, “After a decade of rising deficits and soaring debt, the top White House contenders, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, show little interest in battling over the nation’s finances.” It quoted fiscal hawks, who variously lamented that “there is no good, hard governance anymore,” and that “it’s clearly good politics to recast yourself as the defender of Social Security and Medicare. It’s just bad for the country.”

Curiously, no policy expert opposed to gutting the federal budget made an appearance.

Even in the one April article (4/21/23) that discussed debt as a percentage of GDP, the framing was designed to stoke fear:

Even if the entire estimated savings from the [Republican spending] plan came to pass, it would still leave the nation a decade from now with total debt that was larger than the annual output of the economy—a level that [House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy and other Republicans have frequently labeled a crisis.

No debt crisis in sight

Paul Krugman (New York Times, 5/4/23): "Creating a global depression because we’re afraid of looking silly would be utterly irresponsible."

Whether that level of debt is actually a crisis was not up for discussion. Maybe the Times thinks that’s besides the point. But without such a discussion, readers can easily leave with the assumption that government debt is a serious problem, and with the notion that something drastic must be done, and soon.

As Krugman (5/4/23) has put it, though, “What’s odd about this potential crisis is that it has nothing to do with excessive debt.” In the same op-ed (3/10/23) cited above, he elaborated:

If we do look at debt as a percentage of GDP, it’s indeed high, but not outside ranges that other countries have managed without crisis.... Britain spent large parts of both the 19th and 20th centuries with debt well above current US levels, but without experiencing a severe debt crisis.

Likewise, if we look at American public debt over time, we see that it is still below the record levels it reached in the 1940s. It’s projected to bump past the domestic record by 2028, but there’s little reason to think that will lead to a crisis, besides one ginned up by the right for obviously political reasons. Writing in February (Project Syndicate, 2/9/23) of the projected rise in debt levels over the next decade, Barry Eichengreen, a Berkeley economist who recently co-authored the book In Defense of Public Debt, observed:

This increase is by no means catastrophic.... Cutting essential public programs now to address a debt problem that won’t even begin to materialize for a decade would be shooting ourselves in the foot.

In any case, the debt-to-GDP ratio could easily be stabilized or reduced by raising taxes and controlling healthcare costs, as Krugman recommends.

The federal debt is set for a gradual rise over the next decade, not exactly the uncontrolled explosion that some are warning of.

‘Ticking time bomb’?

The New York Times (5/8/23) says a solution to the debt ceiling crisis will "most likely include the partial reversal of legislative victories won during Mr. Biden’s first two years," because asserting that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional risks "financial volatility."

The New York Times editorial board, interestingly, has taken a different approach to describing the federal debt than the paper’s reporters, writing in a recent editorial (5/8/23), “The federal debt totals about $24.6 trillion, equal to roughly 94% of the nation’s gross domestic product, a high level by historical standards.”

It’s notable that the actual number for debt as a percentage of GDP showed up here, given that it didn’t even show up in the one April article featured in the Times’ database of debt limit coverage that referenced the measure. But perhaps more significant is that the Times chopped down the raw figure for the federal debt from the one that has shown up repeatedly in the paper’s news articles. One article (4/21/23) last month, for instance, had opened:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California has repeatedly said that he and his fellow House Republicans are refusing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, and risking economic catastrophe, to force a reckoning on America’s $31 trillion national debt.

“Without exaggeration, America’s debt is a ticking time bomb that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action,” he said this week.

Now we hear from the Times editorial board that the debt is not $31 trillion, but $24.6 trillion. It turns out that both numbers are correct—the difference is that the first is the one used to determine the legal debt limit, while the second number excludes debt that the government owes to itself, which gives a better sense of the actual debt burden. It would be reasonable to cite either one, or both, in a discussion of the debt limit. Even-handed coverage might cite both numbers equally. The approach of the Times news section, however, is to constantly elevate the larger number, the one that lends itself to more effective fearmongering.

The point is not that people would get such a better sense of the scale of the debt if they read $24.6 trillion rather than $31 trillion. It’s that there’s clearly a more and a less responsible way of presenting the size of the debt. The way the Times editorial presents it doesn’t give all the context you would need if you wanted to inform your readership of what’s going on with the debt, and whether it’s sustainable. But it’s worlds apart from an article that opens with a massive number and no context, followed by an unchallenged description of the debt as “a ticking time bomb.”

'Ruling out cuts' to safety net

The New York Times (4/21/23) chides the Republican Party for its "lowering of ambitions" in not calling for even deeper cuts in spending.

Unfortunately, the Times’ news section has often preferred to throw out big numbers without context rather than giving a fuller picture to its readers. Times reporter Jim Tankersley has been a prime offender here. In the same April piece (4/21/23) that opened with the $31 trillion figure, Tankersley followed up McCarthy’s description of the debt as a “ticking time bomb” with the line, “But the bill Mr. McCarthy introduced on Wednesday would only modestly change the nation’s debt trajectory.” Further down, he continued that the spending cuts proposed by McCarthy

are a far cry from Republicans’ promises, after they won control of the House in November, to balance the budget in 10 years. That lowering of ambitions is partly the product of Republican leaders’ ruling out any cuts to the fast-rising costs of Social Security or Medicare, bowing to an onslaught of political attacks from Mr. Biden.

Notice the framing here: The costs of Social Security and Medicare are “fast-rising.” And a political opponent’s attacks are preventing Republicans from going after those costs.

Unmentioned? The costs of Social Security and Medicare are not unsustainable. According to Congressional Budget Office data from February, Social Security is fairly paltry in comparison to similar programs in many European countries—5.1% of GDP in 2023, versus 14.8% of GDP in spending on public pensions in France in 2019. The projected level of spending for Social Security by 2050? 6.4% of GDP. Gasp!

Medicare costs, meanwhile, are projected to rise from 3.1% to 5.4% of GDP over the same period. One way of viewing this: The combined cost of the two programs in 2050 doesn’t even match the cost of the French government’s public pension system in 2019 (relative to each country’s economic output).

Moreover, Biden’s defense of these programs is certainly tying Republicans’ hands, but so is public opinion. Medicare and Social Security are, and have historically been, incredibly popular (FAIR.org, 4/12/23). There’s a reason why both programs are known as third rails in American politics. Why not acknowledge that this is not a simple matter of red versus blue, but the US public versus those who would take away their retirement benefits?

'Fiscal responsibility'

The New York Times (2/15/23) reported that "some were dismayed" that Biden did not heed the "sober warnings from the experts" by calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Perhaps because Tankersley is quite fond of peddling concern over the costs of these programs. An article of his published in February (2/15/23), towards the start of the current round of debt ceiling drama, for example, bore the headline, “As Lawmakers Spar Over Social Security, Its Costs Are Rising Fast.” Its second paragraph read:

Mr. Biden has effectively steered a debate about fiscal responsibility away from two cherished safety-net programs for seniors [Social Security and Medicare], just as those plans are poised for a decade of rapid spending growth.

Noting that Republicans have agreed not to touch these programs during negotiations over the debt limit, Tankersley observed that the “debate will exclude the primary spending-side drivers of future federal debt and deficits.” He went on to present some dizzying statistics meant to impress the size of the spending on readers without actually informing them of much of anything:

On Wednesday, the budget office predicted Social Security spending would grow by two-thirds over the coming decade. That’s more than double the expected growth rate for spending on the military and on domestic programs like education and environmental protection....

Medicare is a smaller program but poised to grow even faster, at three times the rate of military and other discretionary spending over the next decade, according to the May forecasts.

The cost of these programs as a percentage of GDP was nowhere to be found.

Tankersley then pointed out that Obama agreed with the fiscal hawks in his 2011 State of the Union Address when he called for a bipartisan solution to Social Security (read: cuts to Social Security). The piece continued:

Some were dismayed that Mr. Biden—and Republican lawmakers—did not follow a similar path at his own State of the Union this month. “The sober warnings from the experts is quite a contrast to the gleeful cheers from bipartisan policymakers at the State of the Union for doing nothing,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates federal debt reduction.

Was a progressive expert brought in to balance the budget hawk? Of course not. That would give the views of the majority of the public far too much representation.

A new path forward

A New York Times graphic (5/8/23) helpfully shows how much of the discretionary budget would have to be cut under the Republican plan.

Articles in the New York Times’ news section haven’t uniformly conformed to debt-scolding. A recent article (5/8/23) outlined in detail the severe and unpopular cuts that the Republican spending proposal would require, and even included a graph showing recent trends and future projections for public debt as a percentage of GDP. An earlier piece (3/6/23) did something similar, and even provided a longer time frame for the debt-to-GDP graph, though little additional context was included.

What would be great to see from the Times going forward, as the US approaches the X-date when the government can no longer delay dealing with the debt limit and may in fact default, would be far more serious reporting that provides readers with the context necessary to evaluate debt and spending figures. And to be clear, this would involve more than just giving debt as a percentage of GDP; that’s not some magical number that tells you all you need to know, though mentioning it is more useful than saying $31 trillion over and over.

The paper’s history doesn’t offer much hope, but it's encouraging that its editorial board, in sharp contrast to the board of close rival the Washington Post (FAIR.org, 2/24/23), has refrained from an all-out assault on social spending in recent months, as is the fact that one of the paper’s core columnists has remained clear-eyed on this issue. At the end of the day, Times reporters probably don’t want to be remembered for having enabled Republican hostage-taking, so maybe they should start writing like it.

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