Bloomberg News's in-house ideologue, Journo-lister Ryan Donmoyer, has a new article out that runs under the headline "Most High Earners Wouldn't See Big Bill From Tax Rise." The first sentence of the article, like the headline, emphasizes the idea that letting the Bush tax cuts expire wouldn't be that big a deal: "President Barack Obama's plan to let Bush-era tax cuts for the highest-income Americans expire would have limited effect on 76 percent of those taxpayers, a study says." Lower down, the article reports that the 315,000 taxpayers who earn more than $1 million a year "would owe $31 billion more, or almost $100,000 on average."
$100,000 in additional taxes is a big tax bill, even for some of those who earn more than $1 million a year. And the idea that the federal government is going to raise $31 billion in revenue from 315,000 taxpayers without sending out some big bills is just nonsensensical. Usually in news writing, the focus is on what does happen rather than what doesn't happen: "Three New York Hotels Burn to The Ground" rather than "11 New York Hotels Not Touched By Fire." So why does the Bloomberg article focus on what's not happening rather than what is happening?
It'd be a mystery, except for that thanks to the Daily Caller we know Mr. Donmoyer was a participant in the hard-left Journo-list. And we know he has a track record of slant in covering the Bush tax cuts. You'd think that given all that the editors at Bloomberg would be watching him more carefully.
Today's Bloomberg article also repeats the myth that the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation is "nonpartisan." The committee makes that claim on its Web site but it's hard to credit. The chairman is Max Baucus, a Democrat, and the vice chairman is Sander Levin, also a Democrat. Six of the ten members of the committee are Democrats. I visited with the committee's then-chief economist, Brian Wesbury, in the committee's offices in the mid-1990s when the chairman was Republican Jim Saxton (now a lobbyist), and it was an illuminating and in some ways inspiring meeting in terms of the growth-generating effects of tax cuts. Nonpartisan, though, isn't really the right word for it. Like any committee, its work is affected by the agenda (and political affiliation) of the chairman.
Thanks to the reader-participant-community member-content co-creator-watchdog who sent the tip.