Three times in recent days, reporters have repeated the Democratic spin about Social Security talks as though it were a fact.
Deborah Solomon wrote in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal (sub. req’d.): “Eager to work with Congress to craft a plan to put the giant retirement program on a financially sustainable path, [Treasury secretary Henry Paulson] told Democrats privately and in public that everything was on the table — which is Washington code for talking about raising taxes as part of a compromise. Then Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News: ‘We don’t believe a tax increase is necessary.’ That chilled discussions on Capitol Hill.”
In the Washington Post, Lori Montgomery reported that “talks collapsed after Vice President Cheney told Fox News in January that ‘nothing’s changed’ regarding Bush’s position on taxes, infuriating Conrad.”
Today, Rich Miller and Kevin Carmichael pile on at Bloomberg.com : “While Democrats including Rangel expressed interest in engaging with Paulson on Social Security, the drive faltered after Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox television in January that Bush remains opposed to tax increases, which Democrats say would be an essential part of any agreement.”
In reality, Bush administration officials said that while they opposed tax increases, there would be no preconditions for talks. (That’s what Cheney was saying in the Fox interview , incidentally: The administration wasn’t considering payroll tax hikes–as some conservatives at the time were accusing it of doing–but was eager for talks with no preconditions.) Democrats, on the other hand, insisted that no talks could take place unless personal accounts were off the table. Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Charles Rangel all went on the record saying that. They were the ones insisting on pre-conditions, and they’re the ones who prevented talks from taking place.