The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The Stimulus Bill Was Small Relative to the New Deal: My Unsuccessful Efforts to Get the WashPost to Set the Record Straight

    By AmericanDreamer on Fri, 03/20/2009 - 1:45pm |

    Much of the economic policy discussion over the next few months will be about how to stop the bleeding in the financial sector, and then, how to prevent it from happening again.  Understandably so.

    Paul Krugman is not alone, however, among respected economists who believe the size of the stimulus bill was, while helpful, not large enough.  Depending on what the situation looks like a few months down the road, we may be looking at a need for more stimulus.

    The Washington Post's lead story following passage of the stimulus bill last month contained a serious factual error on its size relative to that of the New Deal.  I sent their Corrections department the following email on February 14:

    The Post's February 14 lead story, "Congress Passes Stimulus Package" appears to contain a factual error about the relative size of the current stimulus package compared to federal spending during the New Deal. On page A10 it states: "The New Deal of the 1930s equaled no more than 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.  The new legislation represents over 5 percent..." 

    In June, 1933, Congress appropriated $3.3 billion for just one New Deal program, the Public Works Administration.  As the nation's gross domestic product for 1933 was $56.4 billion, this amounted to 5.9% of the American economy's overall size for that year. 
     
    source: The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction, Eric Rauchway, p. 65, citing Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online, series Ca74.
     
    If you agree this is an error please confirm, as I would like to send a Letter to the Editor to highlight it.

    (my name and contact information)

    I received no acknowledgement from the Post indicating they had received this email.  Of course there has been no correction issued.

    I have followed up with the Post's new ombudsman, Andy Alexander, to try to get the Post to respond.  He has no direct authority to make them do anything.  He can "only" make suggestions, in his Sunday column and more privately.  I have now spoken a few times with Andy, who has been in the newspaper business for some 40 years, and have found him to be smart and committed.  I also know he completely "gets" the bigger picture concerning the perilous fate of the newspaper industry.  Hopefully his efforts to bring about marked and rapid improvements in the Post's corrections process will meet with some success.  

    However, the prospects for any somewhat longer-term process improvements aside, the chances of the Post either issuing a correction on the substantive matter I raised with them in the letter, or printing the letter as a Letter to the Editor, are at this point nil.  Thus this post, which is what comes to mind as perhaps the best option this Joe Citizen has at this point to try to counter, albeit in a small way, the inaccurate information in the Post's article.