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"Failure to act--and act now--will turn crisis into catastrophe." Such a cataclysmic soundbite was treated with understated calm by the network newscasts. President Barack Obama was lobbying for his $825bn fiscal stimulus to pass the Senate. Yet the networks' response seemed to indicate that he did not deserve maximum airtime on Wednesday, too, following Tuesday's triple interview fest. Only CBS led with the fiscal stimulus debate; ABC and NBC, instead, chose the President's plan to attach a salary cap to the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of the financial sector. The Senate debate on the stimulus did qualify as Story of the Day, however, thanks in part to CBS' decision air a detailed interview with Sen John McCain to explain Republican opposition to the plan.

CBS anchor Katie Couric devoted more than four minutes of airtime to McCain's flat-out rejection of the Keynesian principles underlying the bill. The justification for fiscal stimulus during a recession is that only deficit spending by the government can generate demand at a time when consumers and businesses are, rationally, scaling back. McCain categorically contradicted such demand-side thinking: "No bill is better than this bill because it increases the deficit by over $1tr." The inveterate opponent of pork barrel spending agreed that "technically" there were no earmarked projects in the bill so he opposed non-earmarks instead: "There is a myriad of programs that are not stimulative nor are they job creating…I do not believe that you can, within the next six to twelve months, stimulate the economy and create jobs with programs like these." McCain, instead, stuck with a supply-side formula advocating "payroll tax cuts and business tax cuts."

Does McCain speak for the Republican caucus in the Senate? "Senate Democrats concede that if the vote were held today it is unlikely the bill would pass," CBS' Chip Reid reported. On NBC, Chuck Todd found the same: "If they were scoring the fight for this stimulus package like a political campaign White House aides admit they would be losing." And on ABC, George Stephanopoulos made it unanimous: "If the vote were held in the Senate right now it would not pass." Stephanopoulos reported that Obama has targeted "a group of about six, at most, Republicans" to cobble together a coalition to approve the spending. "One thing he did insist on though--it has to be at least $800bn."


Andrew Tyndall 2/6/09 3:11:29 pm

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