An alarmist front-page news article in the New York Times claims that Republicans in the House of Representatives "are moving to gut many of President Obama's top priorities with the sharpest spending cuts in a generation and a new push to hold government financing hostage."
One example in the Times article is that "The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been flexing its muscle against hedge fund managers and insider trading schemes, would see financing cut 18 percent from the current level."
Oh, the horror.
What the Times article doesn't say is what the newspaper itself reported back in 2011: "by several measures, the S.E.C. is far from starved for money. Its $1.1 billion budget in 2010 was 15 percent higher than the $960 million it received the year before — and nearly triple its $377 million budget in 2000....Last September, H. David Kotz, the inspector general, reported that a lack of adequate policies led the agency to make lease payments that could have been avoided, including more than $15 million for space in Manhattan that no S.E.C. employees have occupied in the last five years."
In the years since that 2011 report, the SEC's budget has only grown even more: a Reuters dispatch reported that under President Obama's budget, "SEC's budget would rise to $1.566 billion from 2012's budget of $1.321 billion."
The agency is reportedly asking Congress for $1.674 billion for 2014. The historical figures from the SEC's Web site are here.
Today's Times article is an example of at least two journalistic errors. The first is a framing error. Looking at the SEC budget within a one-year frame makes an 18 percent reduction look draconian. Looking at it within a 15-year frame makes it clear that the budget has increased dramatically. The second is a lack of skepticism. There's a story line of "sharpest spending cuts in a generation," but the reporter isn't really skeptical about whether those spending cuts would be particularly sharp.