Jack Snow spins Wolf Blitzer

The transcript of Wolf’s interview with the Treasury Secretary can be found here. After Wolf noted the fall in employment per the Payroll Survey, Snow first makes excuses and then offers:

If you look at, Wolf, and this is important to make – a point to make. If you look at the broader survey of work, the most inclusive survey of jobs in America, the household survey, we’ve picked up 3.2 million jobs since the president took office. Now, that’s the survey that’s used to put — to make the estimate on unemployment. It’s the survey that includes all jobs. It’s the survey that is more reliable in dealing with new businesses being established and with the self-employed… American standard of living is higher today than it’s ever been. More Americans own their own homes than ever before. Real disposable income is the highest in the history of the country. Looking at the household survey, more Americans are working than ever before.

Wolf turns to the deficit and Snow offers:

Well, Wolf, let me say on that, first of all, the president wasn’t handed a huge surplus…Deficits matter. Current deficits are too large. The president is committed to bringing the deficit down, and we will. We will bring it down to a level that’s only half of what it was when the president made the commitment here a year ago…The deficit now is lower by about $100 billion than it was estimated to be a year ago. That’s because, with the tax cuts, the economy is growing and expanding at a much faster rate.

Well, at least he did not claim that deficits do not matter. Gene Sperling was on later and said:

And, Wolf, I’ve got to respond to one thing Secretary Snow said, because sometimes there’s something that’s just wrong. He said we didn’t know about — we didn’t inherit a $6.5 trillion surplus. I encourage viewers to go check this. In February of 2001, the Bush administration put out their numbers when they were in charge. And you know what they said the surplus was going to be over next 10 years? $5.6 trillion. So he’s wrong about that. That was their projection. And now we’ve had almost a $10 trillion deterioration, the worse deterioration in history, under President Bush’s watch.

Another reason to elect John Kerry as President: so we can have a Treasury Secretary that tells the truth.