CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey just can’t stop complaining about the deficit run up under a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican president — though he’s become slightly more vocal about that fact than he has in the past.
In his July 29 column, Jeffrey actually called out the Trump administration for noting that an administration official touted President Trump’s purported “commitment to fiscal responsibility” while noting that the federal debt increased by $1.2 trillion under Trump last year and that deficit spending increased by more than $4 trillion this year driven by Trump-signed coronavirus relief bills. Then, because Trump alone can’t be blamed for the deficit even though he’s the one who ultimately signs off on it, Jeffrey then attacks House Democrats for wanting to spend even more on coronavirus relief:
But now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to see Congress enact the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, an additional COVID-19 relief bill that the Democrat-controlled House approved in May. According to the CBO’s estimate, this bill would increase the deficit by $3.445 trillion.
Thus, with just one bill, Congress could increase the deficit by more than all the money the federal government borrowed in the first 214 years of this republic.
[…]If the speaker gets her way, Americans born this year will be paying interest on the additional trillions of dollars she hopes to add to the debt this year — for their entire working lives.
Jeffrey used harsher language to bash Pelosi over a proposed bill that will almost certainly never be approved for that amount after negotiations with the GOP-controlled Senate than he did the actual bills that Trump signed.
By the time Jeffrey’s mid-month stories rolled around, however, he wasn’t so interested in assigning blame. In an Aug. 12 article, Jeffrey wrote:
The federal government set records for the amount of money it spent and the size of the deficit it ran up in the first ten months of fiscal 2020 (October through July), according to data released today in the Monthly Treasury Statement.
In fact, the $5,630,859,000,000 the federal government spent in the first ten months of this fiscal year is more than the government has ever spent in any previous full fiscal year.
Jeffrey didn’t mention the words “Trump” or “Republican” in his article. And, as per usual, the stock photo includes Democrats as if they were equally responsible for the spending approved by a Republican-controlled Senate and signed by a Republican president.
Jeffrey is also being doubly dishonest here. He, nor anyone else at CNS, have reported to their readers that CNS’ parent, the Media Research Center, contributed to this growing federal deficit Jeffrey is decrying by accepting more than $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program money.
In other words, at least part of Jeffrey’s salary this year is being paid in part from the federal debt. As far as we know, he hasn’t turned it down due to concerns over federal overspending.