Just the Fact Check, Man

Joe Biden just signed the American Rescue Plan, his $1.9 trillion COVID bill, into law today.  I meant to write about this yesterday, but my computer was recalcitrant; but I figure we're in for more of the same pattern that inspired this post, so here I go.

Morning Edition ran a segment about the ARP yesterday, featuring a Republican Representative who denounced the bill in familiar terms.  Host Scott Detrow began by asking Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri:

Appreciate you being here. Let's start with this - the president's overall COVID response is pretty popular so far. This bill is popular according to polls. Why do you think that is?

SMITH: It's because the bill has changed so many times throughout the process that once the American people see everything that's in it, the popularity will not be there. It - as what I've said all along, it's the wrong plan at the wrong time. If this bill was about direct payments to people and putting shots in the arms and vaccines, you would have strong bipartisan support across this Congress, across this country. But less than 9% of the entire spending in this bill actually goes to crushing the virus and helping distribute vaccines and putting shots in arms.

DETROW: And I want to get to some of the details that you would rather see in the bill in a moment...

It doesn't seem that they did get into such details.  Smith had a lot of complaints, which were familiar from other right-wing Congressional Republicans, but they were rather insubstantial.  He kept digressing to matters like California's $10 billion deficit, bipartisanship and the danger of a Green New Deal.  Detrow was a crummy interviewer, like most of NPR's team, and I noticed that he let Smith's statements go unchallenged.  It took NPR, like most corporate media, years to get to the point where they dared to point out Trump's lies and the false conspiracy theories about a stolen election, but having done that, they seem to have exhausted themselves.  I had the impression that Smith was spraying out a smoke screen of GOP talking points.  I kept waiting for Detrow to fact-check him, but no dice.  And fact-checking is part of a reporter's job.  Every sentence Smith uttered should have been scrutinized; but of course, it wasn't

I poked around on social media and the web, but couldn't find anything helpful.  My usual liberal and progressive and leftish sources were focused on the progress the bill was making through Congress: it passed the House on Wednesday and the White House announced that Biden would sign on it Friday.  As it turned out, he did it today, ahead of schedule, which is fine.  But I couldn't find any fact-checks of Republican objections to the bill.  Maybe I missed something, I don't know.  I presume, of course, that Republicans lie about such things, but then I also presume that Democrats lie.

This morning I saw on Twitter that Ro Khanna had scoffed at Republican claims about the ARP, but again, without details, and I wanted details.  The comments on his remarks were almost all cheerleading, of course.  Then someone posted a pie graph of the distribution of money under the bill.   The graphic was sourced to the Congressional Budget Office, but without a link. So, to the search engines.  I found a couple of articles that included the graph, but without a link to the CB for more information.  Here's an example from Common Dreams:

So why can't I find a version of this graph on the mainstream news sites?  Why aren't they analyzing the bill and addressing the Republicans' claims about it?  Scott Detrow, for instance, could hardly have been unprepared for Smith's remarks.  All I've heard on NPR the past few weeks has been horse-race stuff: the filibuster, reconciliation, will Biden reach out to the GOP?  Will John and Mary find true love? Can this marriage be saved? As usual, they waste a lot of time asking what might happen, what we can expect, what the future might bring. This is what the responsible, respectable mainstream news media have to offer.