When Is a Cut Not a Cut?

Amidst the sky-is-falling rhetoric of the media over the vote last Thursday night to cut social programs from the budget there is this scarcely mentioned fact tucked away in an AP report:

The broader budget bill would slice almost $50 billion from the deficit by the end of the decade by curbing rapidly growing benefit programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies. Republicans said reining in such programs whose costs spiral upward each year automatically is the first step to restoring fiscal discipline. "This unchecked spending is growing faster than our economy, faster than inflation, and far beyond our means to sustain it," said Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa. (Italics mine)

In other words, Congress did not make any cuts in benefits, they merely cut the rate at which the amount the government spends on these programs would increase every year. A report on NPR the other morning quoted one congressman as saying that instead of the budget increasing over the next several years at a rate of 7.5% the "cuts" will slow its increase to a rate of 7.3%.

In almost none of the other reports on this vote that I could find was this brought out. Instead the reader was given the strong impression that money was being taken out of poor peoples' wallets and put into the greedy hands of the rich.

In an e-mail from Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, he makes this completely unsubstantiated and irresponsible allegation:

It is a moral disgrace to take food from the mouths of hungry children to increase the luxuries of those feasting at a table overflowing with plenty. This is not what America is about, not what the season of Thanksgiving is about, not what loving our neighbor is about, and not what family values are about. There is no moral path our legislators can take to defend a reckless, mean-spirited budget reconciliation bill that diminishes our compassion, as Jesus said, "for the least of these." It is morally unconscionable to hide behind arguments for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency. It is dishonest to stake proud claims to deficit reduction when tax cuts for the wealthy that increase the deficit are the next order of business. It is one more example of an absence of morality in our current political leadership.

What's morally unconscionable is to mislead people into thinking that spending on these social programs is actually being reduced. There's no mention in Wallis' message as to what the rationale is for the "cuts", whether current recipients will indeed lose benefits, whether it will be duplicate benefit programs which are to be cut, whether the eligibility for benefits is being tightened -- no context whatsoever. Just pure rhetoric and propaganda.

Evidently Wallis is of the view that we should just throw every penny we have at the problem of poverty because to withhold anything is morally unconscionable. Mr. Wallis needs to be asked exactly how much of our national wealth he thinks we should be transferring to the poor. At what point, exactly, do we say that we have done enough? When we are transferring 100% of our GDP? If not that, why not?

Is it too much to ask that the media and other liberals report these things competently and accurately?