Math Denier: Politico Reporter Smears Efforts To Address America’s Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb

Want to understand why our nation faces a $31 trillion national debt and few politicians willing to do something about it? A recent Politico story provides a helpful guide.

While the press and the left (but I repeat myself) view catastrophic climate change as a certainty — a prism that makes leftists’ big-government solutions to the “climate crisis” plausible — it takes a far more skeptical tone toward conservative proposals for entitlement reform. In this vein, Natalie Allison’s story about conservatives supporting the “privatization” of Social Security and Medicare uses several tactics to marginalize lawmakers courageous enough to propose reforms that our country will need to remain solvent in future decades.

Conflating ‘Privatization’ with Any Reforms

The article uses the word “privatization” or some derivation thereof 21 times, while referencing the word “reform” but once. At no point does Allison ever define or describe, even in general terms, what she means when using the word “privatization,” or what the politicians who used it referred to.

I would like to know exactly what specific proposal, or proposals, Allison references to debate these ideas on their merits or lack thereof. By failing to provide any details, Allison effectively uses “privatization” as a general slur, to encompass any proposal for substantive changes to Medicare or Social Security.

The fact that Allison also uses the word “cuts” provides some indication as to her intent. Leftist politicians use the word “cut” to describe any reduction in the growth of future spending — for instance, a hypothetical proposal that would reduce Medicare spending growth to 5 percent per year, instead of 7 percent. The fact that the article embraces these tropes, presupposing that government has some predetermined right to grow exponentially in perpetuity, indicates a partisan bias.

Presenting Fact as Opinion

When talking about entitlement reform, Allison characterizes the reasons conservatives have proposed changes to Medicare and Social Security from a highly detached perspective: “Privatizing government entitlement programs has long been a policy goal for some segments of the Republican Party who worry about the federal deficit and the growing share of the federal budget those programs take up.”

That detachment comes at a price of accuracy, for at no point in the article does Allison note that Medicare and Social Security face looming insolvency. In the case of Medicare, which is already functionally insolvent, the program’s official insolvency will come within half a dozen years. So say the Medicare trustees, all of them Democrats, in this year’s report. Allison presented a fact (i.e., entitlement insolvency) as an opinion held by “some segments of the Republican Party,” rather than an official projection made by the U.S. government and four officials appointed by President Biden and confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

As a further thought experiment, substitute “entitlement reform” with “climate change” and “Republicans” with “Democrats” in the above passage. Does anyone believe a Politico reporter would take such a skeptical tone if the roles were reversed? “Lowering carbon emissions has long been a policy goal for