The Washington Post claimed in an editorial that ‘Since 1999, the rate has been edging steadily, and disturbingly, upward.’ After Media Matters pointed out that, in fact, the poverty rate declined from 1999 to 2000 (as it went down every year of the Clinton administration) before increasing from 2000 to 2001 (and every year of the Bush presidency), the Post corrected its error. Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III used his nationally syndicated column to dismiss as ‘comical’ Clinton’s claim that his administration ‘moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.’ In fact, Clinton was understating the disparity, as Media Matters noted: ‘The presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush actually saw a dramatic net increase in the number of impoverished Americans, whereas Clinton’s presidency witnessed an even more dramatic net decrease.’
Fox News contributor and former Clinton adviser Dick Morris also got in on the act. On Fox News host Sean Hannity’s nationally syndicated radio show, Morris made the highly misleading claim that the U.S. poverty rate is ‘two points lower than when he [Clinton] took office, and it’s lower in the midpoint of Bush’s term than it was at the midpoint of his [Clinton’s] term.’ That may be true, but Morris ignored the more important trend that poverty declined every year of Clinton’s presidency and has risen every year of Bush’s.
So where did this flood of misinformation about the Clinton and Bush records on poverty come from? Is it just an odd coincidence? Or is it a result of the recently revealed daily conference calls and emails through which the Republican National Committee gives marching orders to ‘about 80 pundits, GOP-leaning radio and TV hosts, and newsmakers’?” (Media Matters)
