The Post continues to refuse to provide meaningful budget numbers to its readers. The front page today includes two examples of this refusal. The lead story is an article reporting on the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which reports that the bill will require an additional $35 billion over the next five years. It would have been helpful to readers to point out that this sum ($7 billion a year, as noted in the article) is approximately equal to 0.2 percent of projected spending or $23 tax dollars per person per year. Another front page article reported on the corn subsidy program, which is projected to give $1.6 billion to corn farmers this year, even though corn prices are at their highest level in more than a decade. This sum is equal to 0.05 percent of federal spending, or $5.30 tax dollars per person. The article provides a useful analysis of what has arguably become a very wasteful program, but it is wrong to lead readers to believe that this program is a major drain on the federal budget. It isn’t.
--Dean Baker
