by Nancy Folbre
Political strategists often refer to “framing” as the way in which the edges of an argument define perceptions of its core. The term also has an older, sharper meaning that implies miscarriage of justice – as in “he was framed.”
In the debate over the budget deficit and debt ceiling, the American people have been framed in both senses of the term. They have been given a misleading picture of the possibilities, and they have taken the blame for unrealistic attitudes.
Nominally, the budget debate focuses on spending cuts versus tax increases, with Republicans in one corner and Democrats in the other. What I see is a three-way tussle among the rich, the not very rich and the not rich at all over who should pay the costs of balancing the budget.
On this issue, differences among Democrats run deeper than those between the major players getting most of the press: President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner.
Consider a largely invisible proposal for balancing the budget, the People’s Budget, released in April by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes 83 members of Congress.
Its proposed budget savings include major cuts to military spending based on immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Its proposed revenue sources include new tax brackets for the rich (from 45 percent on income over a million dollars a year to 49 percent on income over a billion a year), restoring the estate tax and eliminating the Bush tax cuts.
The Economic Policy Institute provides a more detailed supportive analysis. Proponents have also developed a three-way comparison with budget proposals advocated by President Obama and Congressional Republicans that allows you to register your own preference.
Deficit hawks (at least those who are not tax chickens) should welcome the People’s Budget, because it offers a plausible path to debt reduction.
Matt Miller of The Washington Post noted that the People’s Budget would, unlike the Roadmap for America’s Future advanced by Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, generate a budget surplus at a predictable point in the future, winning the “fiscal responsibility derby.”
Paul Krugman, who praised the People’s Budget in The New York Times, observed that it stood little chance of being passed, but that the same was true of Mr. Ryan’s proposed budget.
Serious consideration of the People’s Budget in April could have reframed the budget debate by counterbalancing the rightward thrust of the Republican proposals. Serious consideration of it today would make President Obama’s focus on closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals and corporations seem faint-hearted, at best.
The progressive tax policies endorsed by the People’s Budget have drawn remarkably strong support in public opinion polls, suggesting that the views of our most powerful elected officials don’t accurately reflect the views of the electorate.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in late February found that 81 percent of people would support a surtax on millionaires to help reduce the budget deficit. A Pew Research Center poll in late May found that 66 percent favored raising income tax rates on those making more than $250,000 and 67 percent raising the wage cap for Social Security taxes.
So why hasn’t a budget proposal that features more progressive taxes had a stronger, more visible impact on the national debate?
Poor press coverage is one explanation. Dave Moberg of In These Times asserted, “The corporate media give progressive alternatives short shrift, even though opinion polls show the public often supports such measures.” Peter Hart of the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting made the more specific assertion that media coverage of the People’s Budget has been confined to opinion pieces, with no “hard news stories about it in the big papers.”
What about The New York Times, often characterized by some of its critics as having a liberal bias?
On July 14, I searched for the phrase “People’s Budget” on The Times’s Web site for occurrences over the last 12 months. I found the mention by Mr. Krugman, two readers’ comments on a previous post of his and a link on the Green blog to a brief derogatory comment in The Atlantic blog.
In short, “no hard news stories” about it (unless they omitted the proposal’s title). On the other hand, Representative Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future was mentioned more than a dozen times, though, of course, it has been in play longer. The most prominent articles focused on Mr. Ryan and his general philosophy rather than on the budget itself.
Maybe that’s the problem: the budget debate seems to elicit less hard news analysis than political framing and reframing.
And there’s no way that people can frame the People’s Budget if they haven’t even heard of it.
