Counterattack of the Deficit Scold Deadenders

Paul Krugman, NYT

The deficit scolds have not had a good year. They’ve seen their forecasts of fiscal disaster fizzle; they’ve seen their favorite economic analyses crash and burn; they’ve seen the rise of a faction with actual power in the Democratic party that refuses to acknowledge their wisdom. This last bit is crucial: deficit scoldery has always depended on the illusion of consensus, in which all the, well, serious people agreed that debt is the most important enemy.

What the scolds have left, however, is a significant part of the press corps that hasn’t gotten the memo, that still believes, for some reason, that all normal journalistic standards should be set aside when the deficit is concerned, that even news reporters should openly take sides. And so, as Kevin Drum points out, today’s WaPo has a report on the apparent mini-budget deal that simply takes it for granted that the failure to achieve a large-scale deficit reduction plan is a terrible failure.

Actually, it’s even worse than Drum suggests. Leave aside the extent to which this is an editorial posing as a news report. There’s also deeply misleading reporting on the facts. Near the end of the piece, we are told

Where would that leave the nation’s financial outlook? Not in a particularly good place, budget analysts say. The most recent Congressional Budget Office projections show the red ink receding over the next two years. But annual deficits would start growing again in 2016 as the baby-boom generation moves inexorably into retirement. And the debt would again soar.

(More here.)