Inflation Expectations Are Now Nearly Static
Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another Washington Post Edition)

Where Is the Budget Reporting?

Stan Collender writes:

http://nationaljournal.com/members/buzz/2007/budget/022707.htm: Like many Washington-based analysts, I generally believe that every word I utter not only is quotable but should be quoted. That's why this time of year is usually so ego fulfilling: the submission of the president's budget to Congress generally means I get calls from lots of people who want to hear what I have to say. That didn't happen this year.... At first I thought it was me.... I assumed that... I was over the hill....

But two days after the president's budget had been sent to Congress, at an informal monthly breakfast of budget analysts I've been attending for more than two decades, I found out that virtually everyone else who is usually quoted heavily this time of year also wasn't getting called. Because of this, the breakfast partly turned into a support group.... It was therapeutic....

It turns out that the reason for this change is actually quite simple: most major media outlets have decided that the budget is not much of a story this year and are not covering it....

On one hand, this is hard to understand. How is it possible that the federal budget -- with spending and revenues that are both nearly equal to one-fifth of the U.S. economy -- is not a significant story that deserves daily in-depth coverage?....

On the other hand, the lack of interest in the Bush FY08 budget and the overall federal budget debate is completely understandable.... Few people believe that there is anything Congress will be able to do to get George Bush to negotiate on budget issues....

Then, of course, there's the elephant that's always in the room in Washington these days: Iraq. The only thing that has been able to push that off the front pages is Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears and, no matter how much we might like it to be otherwise, the federal budget will never able to compete with that type of story.... Finally, the news coverage is far different than it used to be. Not only have the pages and minutes devoted to reporting and analysis generally decreased, but the audience has greatly changed as well.

I called several media friends.... The Washington bureau chief of a major financial outlet told me that he's not covering the budget... because he doesn't think much will happen. A senior Washington correspondent for a major daily newspaper told me she can't get anyone in the White House to talk in a meaningful way.... A producer of a Sunday talk show said that they were planning to cover Iraq and the 2008 election all the time from now on.

At least it's not me.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

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