http://mediamatters.org/items/200708070011?f=h_latestOn the August 6 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, referring to the results of a July 27-30 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found that a higher percentage of respondents thought the Democratic Party "would do a better job" than the Republican Party on the issues of "reducing the federal deficit," "controlling government spending," and "dealing with taxes," host Chris Matthews said: "I don't think it's fair, but it is public opinion right now. The people now think the Democrats are better at balancing the budget. The Democrats are better at reducing government spending. The Democrats are better at lowering taxes. Give me a break."
Matthews has long claimed that the Republicans have an advantage over Democrats on fiscal policy issues, even as polling showed that he was wrong. With this latest poll, he conceded that the public does not in fact favor Republicans over Democrats on issues of fiscal policy, but took the position that the public is simply wrong. Matthews provided no support for the position that Republicans are in fact "better at balancing the budget" and "reducing government spending," and recent history belies it -- the federal government ran a surplus in fiscal years 1998-2001 under budgets signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton but a deficit during fiscal years 2002-2006 under President George W. Bush, as Media Matters for America has noted. (On July 11, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated a $205 billion deficit for fiscal year 2007.) Moreover, Matthews misrepresented the poll question -- respondents were not asked about "lowering taxes" but, rather, about "dealing with taxes."
As Media Matters for America has documented, Matthews has repeatedly asserted that Americans trust the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party on taxes, even though contemporaneous polling contradicted him:
On the March 13, 2006, edition of Hardball, Matthews claimed that "people trust Republicans more than Democrats" to handle taxes, but as Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) noted: "{I}f you look at even your own data and your own polling, they don't."
On the March 28, 2006, edition of Hardball, Matthews acknowledged that "the latest polling shows that people trust Democrats more" on taxes, but he still stated that the polls referred to "tax cutting" and suggested that the results were surprising because "nobody has ever accused the Democrats of tax cutting."
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