It's Like Fox Doesn't Want To Understand How The Debt Limit Works

     In the wake of congressional approval of a three month reprieve for government spending,  Ellie Sandmeyer, a researcher for the news blog MEDIAMATTER; wrote this article in response to today’s October 17, 2013 Fox & Friends News interview with Judicial Analyst and Judge Andrew Napolitano. In the piece Sandmeyer makes the factual claim that Napolitano is essentially clueless about the true mechanisms of national debt funding and calculation. She uses primarily argument by example, but also employs authoritative sources as part of her implied warrant that misleading the public on the facts is a disservice to the electorate.  In the four minute television discussion, Napolitano states that the elevation of the debt ceiling will give President Obama a “free pass,” to print money and to spend as much as he likes for the next 90 days. Citing the Government Accountability Office as an authoritative source, Sandmeyer argues that this is an erroneous assumption because the debt ceiling is only raised to allow the payment of previously accrued debts and not new ones as the judge asserts. Further, Congress always retains the right to authorize any such payments, she contends. Fox interviewer Steve Doocy adds the qualifier that this financial windstorm is inherently damaging to the financial well-being of the American taxpayers who may end up footing the bill for expenditures they don’t support. Fox simultaneously reinforces that observation and its potential for abuse by democrats, via the scrolling caveats featured along the bottom of the screen while the two men talk. Calling Fox’s misrepresentation of the expansive nature of how the government budget system works yet another “right-wing myth,” Sandmeyer qualifies her position with data from two additional authoritative sources: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the congruent rebuttal of PolitiFact, an online political fact checking site. Both of these strategically chosen resources underscore her admonition that funding for expenses is a retroactive process and that it is a misrepresentation of fact to claim that the current administration and the federal government have been unfairly and dangerously empowered by congress to spend at will.       

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/17/its-like-fox-doesnt-want-to-understand-how-the/196471