[link removed]

FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
WaPo So Worried About Deficit It Wants to Increase Pentagon Budget by Half Conor Smyth ([link removed])


WaPo: Recent federal budget deficits were greater than the worst three years of the 1930s

Left out ([link removed]) of the Washington Post's deficits chart (1/11/26 ([link removed]) ): 1943 (26.9% of GDP), 2009 (9.8%), 2020 (14.7%), etc.

The Washington Post editorial board has been on a resolutely right-wing tear recently, with editorial after editorial promoting reactionary opinions on everything from the Trump administration’s illegal kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (1/3/26 ([link removed]) , 1/5/26 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 1/6/26 ([link removed]) ) to Washington state’s flirtation with a millionaire’s tax (1/18/26 ([link removed]) ).

The Post labeled the Trump administration’s flagrant violation of international law “justice” and the Washington state millionaire tax “supersonic,” decrying the fact that it would increase the overall (combined federal, state and local) top marginal tax rate for Seattle residents to 58%. In other words, to a level far below the federal top marginal rate for the entire period ([link removed]) from 1932 through 1981, during which the federal rate peaked at 94%.

Amidst all this, the Post has not forgotten to fret about the federal budget deficit. Earlier this month, under the headline “Running Deficits Larger Than During the Great Depression Is Reckless,” the editorial board (1/11/26 ([link removed]) ) made its concerns clear. The piece opened by outlining the problem:

The federal budget deficit was roughly 6% of gross domestic product for each of the past three fiscal years. During a three-year span of low unemployment, economic expansion, increasing revenue and no major foreign wars, the budget deficit was larger as a share of the economy than any year of the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression.

The problem with this framing is that deficits were not exceptionally high during the 1930s; insufficient deficit spending, in fact, is often cited as a reason it took the US so long to recover from the Great Depression, which finally ended with the massive government expenditures of World War II. While the deficits of the 1930s were somewhat elevated by normal standards, they were nowhere near as high as the deficits of the 1940s, which finally produced a full economic recovery ([link removed]) .

More relevant comparisons are offered ([link removed]) by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The Treasury and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that the budget deficit in fiscal year 2025 was $1.8 trillion, or 5.9% of the economy as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). That’s down significantly from the 9.8% it reached in the depths of the Great Recession and the 14.7% it reached in 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 shutdown—but higher than its 2015 low of 2.4 percent.

As CBPP notes, the budget deficit has fluctuated significantly over the last couple of decades. The Great Recession and the Covid pandemic each saw a spike, followed by a decline. The difference is that the Covid spike was much larger, and so while the deficit has been cut by more than half since its 2020 peak, it remains somewhat high by historical standards. The US government would have to narrow the gap between revenue and spending if it wants to lower the deficit further—something that would provide modest benefits by reducing borrowing costs and protecting the government’s future ability to borrow—but we should recall that it has done this repeatedly historically.


** Not interested in serious discussion
------------------------------------------------------------
CBPP: Both revenues and spending are lower than earlier projections, meaning low revenues are responsible for persistent primary deficits

If we had the spending and revenues anticipated in 2012, the US would have large surpluses now; it's tax cuts, not increased spending, that are responsible for deficits (CBPP, 3/27/23 ([link removed]) ).

Put in this context, the current level of the deficit is less frightening than the Washington Post seems to want us to believe. Nonetheless, this time may very well be different than, say, the aftermath of the Great Recession. It does not seem like the current administration has much interest in taming deficits, and in fact its landmark piece of legislation from 2025 deepened the deficit ([link removed]) by significantly reducing ([link removed]) government revenues.

But the Post is not interested in a serious discussion of how the current administration’s commitment to tax cuts for the rich has worsened the deficit. Nor is the paper interested even on a more general level in looking to the revenue side of the government’s books to understand the current state of affairs.

It is not interested in the fact that, as a Center for American Progress report (3/27/23 ([link removed]) ) noted in its headline, “Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio.” Or the fact that the US is a remarkably low-tax country ([link removed]) . Or that the deficit could be fully plugged by raising overall government revenue to a level below that of most of Europe ([link removed]) . This is information the billionaire-owned Post simply does not want to discuss. In fact, throughout the entire editorial, the word “taxes” is not mentioned once.

The editorial does call for reining in the budget deficit, specifically backing a proposal that would commit the government to targeting a deficit of 3% of GDP by 2030. But the Post’s solutions lie entirely on the spending side:

While the [3% of GDP deficit] goal is reasonable, however, the hard truth is that hitting it won’t be easy. Congress will need to look at mandatory spending (mostly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), which, along with interest payments, accounts for roughly three-quarters of annual expenditures. Mandatory spending currently takes place on autopilot, outside the annual budget process. Everything needs to be on the table to get the debt under control.

The Post, in other words, thinks that we should be looking to target the most prominent elements ([link removed]) of the American welfare state in order to cut the deficit by half. We apparently simply cannot afford to pay for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all at once. All these programs should be on the chopping block. “Everything needs to be on the table,” the Post told us.

Wait, but not everything.


** 'What a bargain'
------------------------------------------------------------
WaPo: Trump wants $1.5 trillion for defense. What a bargain.

Washington Post (1/14/26 ([link removed]) ) : "From striking Iran’s nuclear sites to capturing Nicolás Maduro, Trump continues to show the value of American military might."

Three days after publishing its editorial fretting about the deficit, the Washington Post was back with a clarification. Under the headline “Trump Wants $1.5 Trillion for Defense. What a Bargain,” the editorial board (1/14/26 ([link removed]) ) applauded President Trump’s proposal to increase military spending by an eye-popping 50% in 2027. (This would raise the US military budget from three times that of China, its closest rival, to five times.) As the board put it:

President Donald Trump recently announced that he would request a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 2027. That 50% annual increase may sound outlandish at first. Yet it’s not far from the historical norm—and perhaps the most important step the White House can take to ensuring peace through strength.

So as it turns out, the Post was not saying that everything should be on the table. It was actually saying something much more straightforward: We want the government to cut social programs. (The word "deficit" does not appear in the military budget editorial.)

This marks a shift from the Post’s position just a couple years ago. Back in 2023, when the editorial board published a series of pieces (FAIR.org, 6/15/23 ([link removed]) ) looking at how to rein in the federal debt, one of those pieces (5/25/23 ([link removed]) ) was headlined “The US Could Be Safer—and It Would Cost Less.” That editorial explicitly questioned the wisdom of increasing the size of the military budget, and actually advocated paring back the budget by billions of dollars.

Fast-forward to 2026, and the Post editorial board is not only not calling for military budget cuts, it’s backing a massive increase in the military budget for 2027. (It's not alone ([link removed]) in offering full-throated editorial support to military spending under a president wielding that military in a shockingly unrestrained ([link removed]) way.) And it goes even farther, demanding that military spending be ramped up this year as well. Its reasoning:

If Trump waits for next year’s defense appropriation process, he’ll face pressure from Democrats—who are favored to win the House—to match an increase in defense spending with more nondefense spending, which the nation cannot afford.

Wait, what?

On the one hand, the US cannot afford its social spending, despite the fact that the federal government could easily finance this spending and fully plug the deficit through tax increases that would bring the government’s tax collection more in line with, though still below, the OECD average ([link removed]) . On the other hand, the US can afford to increase military spending, which already makes up about half ([link removed]) of discretionary spending, by $500 billion!

Make it make sense.


** 'Now a conservative opinion page'
------------------------------------------------------------
New Republic: The Washington Post Has Become Right-Wing Even Faster Than I Thought

Michael Tomasky (New Republic, 11/3/25 ([link removed]) ): "Legacy media outlets...are being taken over by right-wing and libertarian billionaires who want quite simply to destroy the idea of the public weal."

Michael Tomasky (New Republic, 11/3/25 ([link removed]) ) nicely summarized the trajectory of the Washington Post back in the fall, with a piece titled “The Washington Post Has Become Right-Wing Even Faster Than I Thought.” After recounting some of the latest right-wing screeds published by the Post editorial board at that point, including one defending Trump’s White House renovation and another attacking Obamacare, Tomasky lamented:

Add the recent hiring of three conservative columnists, presumably recruited to advance owner Jeff Bezos’ passion for “personal liberties and free markets,” and it’s hard to argue with the assessment of Post columnist Marc Thiessen, once a token right-wing outlier, who not long ago crowed: “We’re now a conservative opinion page.”

As Tomasky noted, this now leaves Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, with three conservative dailies (including the Washington Times and Examiner), and not a single liberal paper. He concluded:

I have said this before, and I’ll say it again here: We are at most a few years away from the mainstream media becoming controlled top to bottom, with a very few exceptions, by ultrarich conservatives and their hirelings.

Sadly, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. The US news landscape has looked bad in the past, including the recent pre-Trump past, and the Post has been espousing fiscally hawkish, anti-social spending opinions for decades at this point (e.g., FAIR.org, 5/27/10 ([link removed]) , 7/29/19 ([link removed]) , 3/20/25 ([link removed]) ). But with the Post now transforming into a pale replica of the Wall Street Journal, and the news landscape more broadly being taken over by conservative interests, things are suddenly looking much, much worse.
Read more ([link removed])

Share this post: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Twitter"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Twitter" alt="Twitter" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Facebook"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Facebook" alt="Facebook" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Pinterest"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Pinterest" alt="Pinterest" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="LinkedIn" alt="LinkedIn" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Google Plus"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Google Plus" alt="Google Plus" class="mc-share"></a>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="[link removed]" title="Instapaper"><img border="0" height="15" width="15" src="[link removed]" title="Instapaper" alt="Instapaper" class="mc-share"></a>
​

© 2021 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up for email alerts from
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Our mailing address is:
FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING
124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201
New York, NY 10001

FAIR's Website ([link removed])

FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today ([link removed]) .

Follow us on Twitter ([link removed]) | Friend us on Facebook ([link removed])

change your preferences ([link removed])
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]
unsubscribe ([link removed]) .