One of the more confusing moments of the Republican presidential debate in Iowa the other day came when the Des Moines Register’s David Yespen, one of the most respected political journalists in the country, noted to Rudy Giuliani that Gov. Pawlenty (R) in Minnesota is open to raising taxes in order to address infrastructure concerns. Yespen asked Giuliani if the “Republican dogma against taxes” is “precluding the ability of you and your party to come up with the revenues that the country needs to fix its bridges.”
GIULIANI: David, there’s an assumption in your question that is not necessarily correct, sort of the Democratic, liberal assumption: “I need money; I raise taxes.”
YEPSEN: Then what are you going to cut, sir?
GIULIANI: The way to do it sometimes is to reduce taxes and raise more money. For example, I ran the city — I ran a city with 759 bridges; probably the most used bridges in the nation, some of the most used in the world. I was able to acquire more money to fund capital programs…. I was able to raise more money to fix those bridges by lowering taxes….
Later, in the same debate, Giuliani added, “[I]f we were starting off at the very beginning with taxation, the first argument I would make is let’s not have any taxes.”
Now, Giuliani’s comments were a special kind of stupid, but the exchange was uniquely annoying for a variety of reasons.
First, the former mayor seems to sincerely believe that tax cuts can pay for themselves. It’s an absurd argument that rears its ugly head from time to time, but it’s been debunked repeatedly. Even the president’s own economists reject the idea as bogus.
Second, Giuliani seems to believe he could address NYC infrastructure because of the strength of the local economy. In reality, as Anonymous Liberal noted, “Nevermind that this happened to coincide with the stock market boom of the late 90s.”
And third, Giuliani shamelessly repeats this nonsense because he knows the media isn’t going to call him on it.
Matt Yglesias explained that Giuliani’s argument demonstrated a “stunning confession of total ignorance of tax policy and economics by the GOP front runner,” but checked major news outlets to see how journalists covered the former mayor’s ridiculous remarks.
The results were predictable. Two reporters at the WaPo, the LAT, and the AP simply passed along Giuliani’s argument to readers, without noting the obvious error. The NYT didn’t get into the silly notion that tax cuts can pay for themselves, but did note that Giuliani’s argument was an exaggeration because of the general health of the national economy.
This need not be complicated: Republican presidential candidates routinely make demonstrably false claims because they know they’ll get away with it. Dems (and bloggers) will call them on their bogus claims, but most news accounts will either a) dutifully pass along the bogus claim without fact-checking; or b) note the claim and the criticism of the claim in a classic “he said, she said” style. Either way, the typical American news consumer won’t know the truth, and won’t know they’re being lied to by the likes of Giuliani.
Candidates, particularly Republican candidates, need disincentives. If they can lie with impunity, they will. If their lies are exposed and make the candidates appear foolish, they’ll stop.
Perhaps reporters are afraid of being accused of “bias,” but there’s an easy way to convey reality to readers/viewers. Using the debate example, a news item could report, “Giuliani claimed he could cut taxes and generate more revenue, but the claim has been refuted by reputable economists from both sides of the aisle for years.”
I am, of course, a dreamer, and this isn’t going to happen. As A.L. concluded, “In a rational universe, this kind of clownish pseudo-economics would be exposed as such at every opportunity and, in short order, it would no longer be politically feasible to say such stupid, unsupportable things on the campaign trail. Alas, that’s not the universe we live in.”