I'm not sure who comes off looking worse here: The U.S. Senate or the New York Times. A typical example:On the same program, Senator Arlen Spector, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, shrugged off criticism by his former party that the Senate bill would end up vastly increasing the federal budget and widening the deficit. He pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office, the respected arbiter on what legislation costs, said that the bill would save $130 billion in the first 10 years and $650 billion in the second 10 years.But Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, was skeptical, saying “I don’t think one out of 10 Americans believes that.” The bill, he said, would lead to higher premiums, higher taxes, cuts in Medicare and it would put “15 million more low-income Americans into a medical ghetto called Medicaid."Soooo, the CBO, a vaunted, non-partisan group of economists, says the bill will save hundreds of billions of dollars. (Incidentally, many other economists agree.) But Alexander cites a poll that he took in his head -- I haven't seen any polls of whether Americans agree with numerous economists that the public option will save money, but six in ten think it should be in the bill -- and then makes up a bunch of stuff before calling a program that provides low-income Americans health care a "ghetto." And, in traditional newspaper style, all that is quoted as if it was as substantive as what Specter said.Maybe I'm just being foolish, and it's obvious that everyone who reads those two paragraphs will realize that Alexander's comments are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing. But I have the sneaking suspicion that people will read that and say, well, a U.S. senator believes this is the case and he must have the facts. There's got to be a role for editorial discretion where a reporter or an editor can look at a comment, realize that it is not sound, and pull out the old red pen.Meanwhile, as Matt Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman note, moderates like Blanche Lincoln are still not expected to explain their positions. When Brian Beutler catches Joe Lieberman making stuff up about what is in the public record -- namely, whether or not presidential candidate Barack Obama included a public option in his campaign health-care plan (he did) -- Lieberman blows him off. Give Beutler points for trying to get an explanation -- it's more than Carl Hulse is doing.
-- Tim Fernholz
