Scott Rasmussen makes a clear and (I’d say) undeniable point about reportage about federal budget numbers:

It was just about impossible, though, to find any media story mentioning some basic numbers that belong in any story about a new federal budget. How much money is the federal government spending this year? How does that compare to what it spent last year, or expects to spend next year? …

It’s hard to write that the president’s budget is cutting spending by $600 billion while also reporting numbers showing spending going in the opposite direction. …

The absurdity is that while annual spending will be a trillion dollars higher in a few years, the political world is trying to claim that the budget is filled with spending cuts.

The reason for this disconnect, Rasmussen explains, is that journalists start with the government spin that it’s a “cut” when they spend less than they were thinking of spending.  We saw this recently in Rhode Island, when the headlines were that Medicaid was being cut in the state, even though the program increases by hundreds of millions of dollars in the governor’s budget.

The objectionable result is that the government could increase public assistance (for example), but if it did so by shifting some into a new program, it would very possibly be reported in the news as a cut.

It’s a matter of differing opinions whether this is evidence that the media is ideologically tuned to prefer government spin or just doesn’t have the time or expertise to contradict it.  Either way, resolving a cognitive dissonance by reporting a third-order number (the decrease of the increase) rather than the straight numbers serves the American electorate poorly.