AP Article on States' Budget Woes Ignores Spending Excesses

Old Media coverage of government budget difficulties usually focuses on the here and now, and all the "tough decisions" that have to be made. Seldom is there ever an examination of how a state or local government entity got into its current fix. Sunday's Associated Press report on the budget situations many states governments face was no exception. In it, AP reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins:

• Recited a litany of current woes.
• Failed to mention that most states have allowed spending to greatly exceed inflation during the past several years.
• Gave unchallenged quotes to advocates of further tax and fee increases.

What Welsh-Huggins totally ignores is that during the past four years, state and local government spending has exploded, and is now taking a greater share of income than ever, as shown here (Source: The Tax Foundation; more detailed looks at each state can be found here):

[big graphs, show lots of spending increases, etc. etc. - point is; shouldn't professional journalists know that such info. is required in any such story? They do - but ignore it anyway. Why?]

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