NYT's Flacid Fact Checking

The NYT takes Senator Obama to task for claiming that Senator McCain would cut Medicare by $882 billion (@13 percent) over the next decade. The article explains that this claim is derived from Senator McCain's claim that he would pay for his tax plans by savings from Medicare and Medicaid. The article points out that Senator McCain never explicitly claimed that he would cut $882 billion from Medicare. While the NYT can accurately say that Obama is making important assumptions in his attack that may not be correct, the more important issue is that Senator McCain is proposing a policy that will require large budget cuts and he has not told the public where he would make these cuts. While it is fine to tell readers that Obama's assumptions may be wrong, this belongs in a larger story that reports on the unspecified budget cuts that Senator McCain will need to pay for his tax cuts.

--Dean Baker