Progressive Proposals Are Ignored by the Media in the US

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Paul Ryan's Road Map, was promoted by the 87 freshmen reps in the House who were elected as Tea Party supporters. It passed in the GOP house and all but a handful of GOP senators voted for it. Of course it had no chance of passing in the Senate and Obama certainly would have vetoed it. In other words, it had no chance of becoming law but it was broadly covered by the media and Ryan has become a media darling.

This is a link to a budget reduction package that was proposed by 83 members of the progressive caucus in Congress. It fixes the deficit by cutting military spending and by making the tax system more progressive. Like the Ryan plan it has no chance of becoming law. Unlike the Ryan plan, however, few have ever heard of it because it has been ignored by the media. I posted the plan primarily to show how political debate in the US is framed by the media. Conservative plans receive lots of attention, and they are compared with compromises being offered by the administration, which agree to spending cuts on social programs that the GOP does not like, but which do little to cut military spending. The administration plan includes some tax increases but the deficit is reduced primarily by spending cuts.

The conclusion is that political debate in the US is between the far right of the GOP, and a center right administration. The media pays little attention to ideas that are left of center even though much of the public supports many of the ideas in the progressive plan for reducing deficits. This contrasts sharply with the political debate in the Pre-Reagan era. William Buckley, a prominent conservative, rightly complained at that time that the political debate in the US was between the far left and the center left. Conservative viewpoints received little attention in the media. Beginning with Reagan, conservatives have done a remarkable job of turning things around. They have made free market ideology the dominant ideology that shapes debate. The myth of free markets is assumed, and the debate is over how to deal with modest imperfections or market failures.