Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama's budget proposal

[Ian David]

Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama's budget proposal

Summary: Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods related to the proposal.

Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods about the proposal. These myths and falsehoods include the suggestion that Obama's proposal would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses and the suggestion that using reconciliation to pass major policy goals would represent an unusual or unprecedented tactic. Media have also engaged in a pattern of criticizing Obama for addressing heath care in the budget or elsewhere, given the size of the current and projected U.S. federal debt, without addressing the president's response that health-care reform is essential to the long-term economic and fiscal health of the country.

1. Obama's budget proposal would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses

Many media figures and outlets, including CNBC host Joe Kernen, CNBC host Maria Bartiromo, ABC News' Jake Tapper, CNN's Dana Bash, Fox News' Sean Hannity, CNN's David Gergen, Politico, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, have advanced, uncritically repeated, or failed to challenge the debunked Republican falsehood that Obama's income tax proposals would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses. For example, Kernen didn't challenge Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) on the March 26 edition of CNBC's Squawk Box after Gregg referred to Obama's proposal as a "tax policy that basically is focused on raising taxes on small businesses especially."

In fact, according to the Tax Policy Center's table of 2007 tax returns that reported small-business income, 481,000 of those returns -- about 2 percent -- are in the top two income tax brackets, which include all filers with taxable incomes that would be affected by Obama's proposals to let portions of the Bush tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers expire and to reduce the tax rate at which families making more than $250,000 could take itemized deductions.

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200904020004