CNSNews.com editor and supposed deficit hawk Terry Jeffrey had no interest in blaming Donald Trump or a Republican-controlled Senate for growing deficits through 2020, but he’s quick to heap blame on Democrats now that they’re in control of the White House. That pattern did not change in the final four months of 2021. Jeffrey declared in a Sept. 13 article:
The federal government collected a record $3,586,456,000,000 in total taxes through first eleven months of fiscal 2021 (September through August), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
The federal government also collected a record $1,829,589,000,000 in individual income taxes in the September-through-August period.
Jeffrey made no mention of how the spending continued a pattern of higher pandemic-related deficit spending established by the Trump administration in 2020. He did, however, include a stock photo of Nancy Pelosi and the back of (maybe) President Biden’s head, and he also bizarrely suggested that the country wasn’t spending enough money on defense and too much money on helping American citizens:
On the spending side, the federal government spent the most money through the Department of Health and Human Services, which has $1,340,131,000,000 in expenditures in September through August.
The Social Security Administration placed second, spending $1,092,771,000,000.
The Department of Defense—Military Programs spent $653,852,000,000 or less than half of the $1,340,131,000,000 spent by HHS.
Jeffrey repeated much of that, with updated numbers, in an Oct. 25 fiscal-year-end article:
The federal government collected a record $4,045,979,000,000 in taxes in fiscal 2021, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which is the final month of the federal fiscal year.
Federal spending also hit a nominal high of $6,818,158,000,000 in fiscal 2021, up from the $6,551,872,000,000 that the federal government spent in fiscal 2020. However, when the $6,551,872,000,000 the federal government spent last year is adjusted for inflation from September 2020 dollars into September 2021 dollars it equals $6,905,040,760,000—thus, exceeding this fiscal year’s total of $6,818,158,000,000.
[…]The Department of Health and Human Services spent $1,466,673,000,000 in fiscal 2021. The Social Security Administration spent $1,192,453,000,000. The Department of Defense spent $717,585,000,000.
Jeffrey didn’t mention that Trump was president for the first 2 1/2 months of fiscal 2021. Nevertheless, he included a stock photo of Biden, Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The complaint was regurgitated in Jeffrey’s Nov. 10 article:
The federal government, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, collected a record $283,927,000,000 in total taxes in October, which was the first month of fiscal 2022.
Federal spending hit $448,983,000,000 in October, which was the second highest ever for the first month of a fiscal year. The federal government set its record spending in the first month of the fiscal year last October, when the it spent $554,232,780,000 (in constant October 2021 dollars).
[…]The biggest expenditure by the Treasury in October was for the Department of Health and Human Services, which accounted for $120,507,000,000 in spending.
The second biggest expenditure was for the Social Security Administration, which accounted for $101,055,000,000 in spending.
The third biggest expenditure was for the Department of Defense-Military Programs, which accounted for $65,482,000,000 in spending.
This time, the stock photo was of Biden, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
It was lather, rinse, repeat for Jeffrey’s Dec. 10 article:
The federal government collected a record $565,135,000,000 in total taxes through the first two months of fiscal 2022 (October and November), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
The federal government also collected a record $282,094,000,000 in individual income taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year.
While collecting its record $565,135,000,000 in total taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year, the federal government spent $921,526,000,000—resulting in a deficit of $356,390,000,000 in the first two months of the fiscal year.
[…]The Department of Health and Human Services spent more money–$254,706,000,000—in the first two months of fiscal 2022 than any other federal department or agency. It was followed by the Social Security Administration, which spent $201,487,000,000. The Defense Department-Military Programs placed third with $126,299,000,000 in spending in the October-through-November period.
This month’s stock photo featured Biden and Pelosi.
Each of these articles notes at the end that “The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.” Is Wold rolling in his grave seeing his money paying for such lazy, rote reporting?