There is apparently no lie the Republicans can say that the Mainstream Media won't buy. All these years of lying and killing people with lies should at least get some skepticism of GOP integrity. Instead we have media outright helping the GOP despite all the people they helped kill.
Media Matters: Mainstream outlets fall for Republican senators’ effort to “rein in” Biden’s economic rescue package in the name of “unity” - “Unity” means no more violent insurrections — not Democrats doing what Mitch McConnell really wants
Mainstream media are already falling for a trap laid by conservative media outlets, in which President Joe Biden’s calls for national unity in the wake of the far-right January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are twisted to an absurd conclusion: that Democrats should not enact the policies they ran on for the country — specifically, in order to help the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic — but instead give in to the Republican agenda.
Biden met on Monday with a group of 10 Republican senators, who offered an economic relief plan only one-third the size of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, in an effort to dissuade him from pursuing a stimulus plan through the budget reconciliation process that would only require the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate.
Instead, the GOP senators averred, working with them could meet a 60-vote supermajority to beat a filibuster from the rest of the Senate Republicans. This, they say, would meet Biden’s calls for unity. (The previous right-wing insurrection, and continued Republican obstruction in Congress, are conveniently overlooked.)
Too many in mainstream media are falling for their political pitch. And a key question is lost in all this: Can Democrats even realistically count on Republicans to work together after years of obstruction?
Media Matters: Some mainstream media overemphasize bipartisanship, push outdated fears about debt and inflation in covering relief bill
In a note released on Thursday, UBS economists led by Alan Detmeister stated that the stimulus probably wouldn't cause a surge in inflation, with any inflation effects “likely to be small." On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs economists led by Jan Hatzius also signaled a low possibility of inflation, estimating the US output gap is more than twice the size projected by the CBO, meaning that the hole in the economy that Biden is trying to fill is actually pretty close to $1.9 trillion.
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On a CNBC appearance later in February, Yellen said inflation has been “very low for over a decade, and you know it's a risk, but it's a risk that the Federal Reserve and others have tools to address."
Yellen's comments echo those of the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, who sees a huge difference between now and the aforementioned 1970s. “Inflation has been much lower and more stable over the past three decades than in earlier times," Powell said this week in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. “In the 1970s, when inflation would go up, it would stay up," he said.
- The Washington Post published a video analysis titled “Why the candidate who promised unity is relying on an increasingly partisan legislative process to pass coronavirus relief.” The Post explained that the video analyzes “how Biden’s calls for unity could clash with his reliance on ‘budget reconciliation’ amid a pandemic, an economic recession and the slimmest congressional majority in decades.”
- On February 26, CNN anchor Poppy Harlow asked former Obama Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro about the Biden administration “pushing through this $1.9 trillion stimulus bill” when “it will not have a single Republican in either chamber supporting it.” Harlow asked Castro if he’s “worried that we're not seeing as much” unity and bipartisanship from Biden “as you had hoped for,” and she concluded the segment by emphasizing that Republicans actually “did lift a finger in terms of making a counterproposal that was not acceptable to the Biden administration.”
- On March 7, NBC host Chuck Todd questioned Biden’s commitment to bipartisanship after the bill passed, given that “he was the guy that was talking about being able to restore some normalcy to Washington.”
- CBS anchor Margaret Brennan asked Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV), one of the few Republican politicians who expressed support for the bill, how he can “justify to your fellow Republican governors and to the rest of the country why this is worth $2 trillion of taxpayer money?”
Suggesting that stimulus bill is too big for an improving economy or fearmongering that it will lead to a higher national debt and inflation
- In a March 5 CNN segment discussing the jobs report, anchor Jim Sciutto asked White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey to respond to “folks who say, ‘Listen, things are getting better, this is much money to spend right now.’” When Boushey explained that “we continue to see that we are down more jobs than in the darkest days of the Great Recession,” Sciutto emphasized that “Wall Street [is] already worried about the danger of inflation” and asked her to comment on a situation where the Biden administration “finds itself with an inflation problem by the end of the year.”
- The Washington Post published an article on March 4 titled “As Senate rushes $1.9 trillion bill through Congress, Biden faces doubts over whether it’s still the right package.” The article explained that “for policy experts and even members of Biden’s own party, the improving [economic] picture is raising questions about whether the stimulus bill is mismatched to the needs of the current moment.”
- Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich claimed in a February 26 piece for USA Today that an “overstuffed $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill endangers future growth and prosperity,” fearmongering that “it will drive up deficits so high they'll threaten our national economic wellbeing and response capacity.”
- On March 3, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough interviewed recently retired Washington Post business and economic columnist Steve Pearlstein, whose final column with the paper was a snarky piece lambasting progressive arguments for a large stimulus package. Scarborough detailed the rising national debt figures in recent years before asking, “At some point this madness has to stop, doesn't it?” Pearlstein complained that “liberal Democrats” can’t “tell me where the limit” to spending should be before complaining that “this is a little bit of a Christmas tree bill” and adding, “Wait until you see the next one.”
- On February 23, Scarborough also asked Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to address Summers’ op-ed and “possible inflationary concerns” from “other Democratic economists who also are not voicing those concerns publicly but also share some concerns.”
- USA Today published a February 25 article titled “With the economy healing, is Biden's $1.9T COVID-19 relief package too much?”
- The American Enterprise Institute’s Desmond Lachman published an op-ed in The Hill claiming that “the IMF should not support the Biden stimulus” because of the risks of runaway inflation.
- Discussing the stimulus package on the February 28 edition of MSNBC’s Meet the Press, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens expressed concern about “injecting close to $2 trillion into a growing economy” leading to “inflationary pressures.” Stephens agreed with GOP opposition to the bill and said that “the United States government is like an anaconda that's eating one too many alligators here. There's only so much that we can digest and money that we can pump out in a reasonable span of time.”
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