Here are the first two paragraphs of Krugman's column-cum-story.

"Last Thursday a House subcommittee met to finalize next year's homeland security appropriation. The ranking Democrat announced that he would introduce an amendment adding roughly $1 billion for areas like port security and border security that, according to just about every expert, have been severely neglected since Sept. 11. He proposed to pay for the additions by slightly scaling back tax cuts for people making more than $1 million per year.

"The subcommittee's chairman promptly closed the meeting to the public, citing national security — though no classified material was under discussion. And the bill that emerged from the closed meeting did not contain the extra funding."

Now let's take those paragraphs apart one phrase at a time.

"Last Thursday a House subcommittee met to finalize next year's homeland security appropriation."

Yes, believe it or not, "a House subcommittee" is not identified by name -- and this is the lead in a column in America's newspaper of record (you'd flunk high school journalism class for pulling such an obviously boneheaded move). But why leave out such a simple and critical piece of information? One less fact to fact-check? Nah, can't be that -- Krugman's columns aren't fact-checked to begin with. Must be to establish a sinister, mysterious mood... "It was a dark and stormy night...and bloodthirsty Republicans were prowling the halls of Congress..."

"The ranking Democrat announced that he would introduce an amendment adding roughly $1 billion for areas like port security and border security that, according to just about every expert, have been severely neglected since Sept. 11."

"The ranking Democrat" doesn't get named any more than his subcommittee did. He's Martin Olav Sabo, Democrat of Minnesota, but there's no record that I can find of Sabo's amendment. It's so unimportant to Sabo that the only thing remotely related to it on his web site is a press release of June 6 in which he crows that "Minnesota will receive $26,690,000 for first responder preparedness and to help ease the state’s costs of enhanced security during elevated threat levels."

"Just about every expert" doesn't get named, either. But it only takes a moment or two of web-surfing to find proof that port and border security has hardly been "severely neglected." The first story I found was in, of all places, the New York Times -- and it ran the very same day that un-named subcommittee met. According to the Times story, "The Bush administration has decided to place teams of American inspectors at major seaports in Muslim nations and other smaller, strategically located foreign ports to prevent terrorists from using cargo containers to smuggle chemical, biological or nuclear weapons into the United States... [Homeland Security Secretary] Ridge is also expected to announce the distribution of $170 million in federal grants to strengthen port security around the country, most of it directed to state and local governments, and $30 million for research and development on cargo security."

"He proposed to pay for the additions by slightly scaling back tax cuts for people making more than $1 million per year."

Yeah, right. The House and the Senate just agreed on historical tax reform (after an equally historic battle over it) -- now we are supposed to believe that a congressman would seriously act as though an appropriations subcommittee is a place where that just-enacted bill is going to be revised to the tune of a lousy $1 billion? No, even congressmen -- even Democratic congressmen -- aren't that stupid. To be that stupid you have to be an economics professor or a New York Times columnist (maybe both).

"The subcommittee's chairman promptly closed the meeting to the public, citing national security — though no classified material was under discussion."

"The subcommittee's chairman" isn't named (he's Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky). And how does Krugman know that "no classified material was under discussion" if the meeting was closed to the public? An Associated Press story reported that "Democrats said sensitive information was not discussed during the closed-door session, though Rogers said it was." Krugman repeats the Democratic side of the dispute as a fact. The idea is to create the impression that Rogers closed the doors to the public so that he wouldn't be seen doing anything so unseemly as arguing against taxing the rich. But the same AP story quotes David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, offering an entirely different explanation: "They just don't want a public airing, any more than necessary, of the incompetence of some agencies."

"And the bill that emerged from the closed meeting did not contain the extra funding."

Well, at least that last sentence appears to be a fact. Although Krugman omits to mention that, even though "the ranking Democrat's" particular $1 billion didn't make it into the bill, the bill nevertheless appropriated more than $1 billion over the administration's request.

In the absence of any other Times coverage of the homeland security appropriation bill, Krugman goes on to claim that

"...according to Fred Kaplan in Slate, the administration's latest budget proposal for homeland security actually contains less money than was spent last year."

Astonishingly, Krugman's own cited source contradicts him. In a June 6 Slate column Fred Kaplan wrote,

"The department is requesting $36.1 billion for next year, which looks at first glance like a $2.4 billion increase over this year's $33.7 billion. This boost would be slight enough under the circumstances, but in fact it's not a boost at all. Congress doled out an additional $3.9 billion to DHS earlier this year, putting its total 2003 budget at $37.6 billion. So the request for the coming fiscal year amounts to a $1.5 billion reduction. (This charge may be a bit unfair; there's bound to be an FY04 supplemental request later on. Still, the department's budget isn't exactly soaring.)"

Even Kaplan and the fact-checkers at Slate -- nothing but a liberal online rag -- had the integrity to qualify the claim with "may be a bit unfair" -- and to effectively nullify it by rephrasing it as "isn't exactly soaring." But the newspaper of record left all that out.

If this really is the Times' new paradigm for handling political news, I want the old paradigm back! I'd rather have seen this appropriations bill covered on the Times' Washington page -- yes, even with Jayson Blair's byline. Anything but Paul Krugman's lies, disguised as news. It was bad enough when they were disguised as opinion.

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:25 AM | link  

Monday, June 16, 2003