Los Angeles Times reporter Johanna Neuman misremembers President Clinton's 1993 budget:

Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky came to Congress on President Clinton's coattails.

Then she became the margin of victory for Clinton's 1993 budget, which actually eliminated the deficit for the first time in decades by raising federal taxes on the middle class.

Well, no. That's not how the 1993 budget got rid of the deficit (actually, it's probably more accurate to say it reduced the deficit; the budget wasn't balanced until 1997.) The middle class saw very little in the way of tax increases due to the '93 budget. Here's an explanation from Citizens for Tax Justice:

It raised income tax rates at the very top of the income scale, adding new brackets of 36 percent and 39.6 percent above the then top rate of 31 percent. It eliminated the $125,000 earnings cap on the Medicare-financing portion of payroll taxes and included some modest corporate tax reforms. The bill also expanded the earned-income tax credit for lower-income working families. In addition, about four million better-off seniors were required have to pay taxes on a higher portion of their Social Security benefits.

For most families, the only tax increase in the bill was the 4.3-cent-a-gallon boost in the gasoline tax. That may have been politically ill-advised, but it raised middle-income families' taxes by an average of only about $40 a year.

More from CTJ:

[T]he 1993 tax changes were very progressive, concentrating mainly on taking back a portion the supply-side tax cuts that had gone to the very rich. In fact, except for a 4.3 cent increase in the gasoline tax, most families didn't pay a penny more in federal taxes as a result of the 1993 act. The boost in the top personal income tax rate affected only the best-off one percent of all families, and the expanded taxation of Social Security benefits hit only 3% of all families (also generally better-off ones).

Overall, only 4.2% of all families saw an increase in their personal income taxes as a result of the 1993 tax act. In contrast, 14.9% of all families got an income tax cut, due to the expanded earned-income tax credit for working families. In other words, Clinton's 1993 tax act cut income taxes for far more families than it raised them.

And a Brookings paper by Jeffrey Frankel and Peter Orszag:

[T]he 1993 package included significant spending reductions and tax increases. But it concentrated the tax increases on upper-income taxpayers, while substantially expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, and other government programs aimed at lower earners.

I could go on like this all day, but the bottom line is that claiming the 1993 budget reduced the deficit “by raising federal taxes on the middle class” is the kind of blatantly false assertion that has no place in a political ad, much less in a news report.

Ironically, Neuman brought up the 1993 budget vote in order to draw a parallel to the political peril supposedly facing Democrats who vote for health care reform. But the peril, if it exists, is that the media will mindlessly amplify bogus Republican attacks, just like they did with the '93 budget -- and just like Neuman did in her post.