Diane Rehm, who often has very good shows (especially when she has me as a guest), used her talk show yesterday to promote the fiscal scare stories. She allowed David Walker (the star of the CBS 60 Minutes horror show on the budget last month back) to spin his tale of the country going bankrupt without anyone presenting an alternative perspective. As is easy to show, Walker's story depends entirely on projections of exploding health care costs. If the U.S. could contain its health care costs, as every other country has managed to do, then there is no serious problem. If health care costs grow as projected, then the economy will be wrecked, even if we eliminate the government health care programs. As I have also pointed out, if we are really too dumb or corrupt to ever fix our health care system, if anyone in power supported free trade we could solve our problem by contracting out much of our health care services to countries with working health care systems. Walker is perhaps the arch promulgator of the "trillions" scare tactic. The prospect of "trillions" of debt sounds very ominous to most people who will never see even a million dollars. Of course our future income is projected to be close to 1000 trillion dollars, so the propsect of something like $10-$15 trillion in debt should not really be that scary. But, the point of this show (like the 60 Minutes segment) was to promote fear, not to convey information. I should also point out that this is the second time (at least) that Diane Rehm has had one of the main promulgators of the deficit scare story without allowing anyone to present a conflicting opinion. About two years ago, Peter Peterson, the Commerce Secretary in the Nixon administration, was given the mike for an hour, again without any conflicting opinions. Diane Rehm generally tries to present balanced shows. I know that I have always debated someone with a very different position when I have appeared. I can't see any grounds for allowing the promulgators of the deficit scare stories to present their views unchallenged.
--Dean Baker
