Reading from an Associated Press article about President Bush's January 3 Rose Garden message to the new Democratic-controlled Congress, KUSA 9News at 5 p.m. co-anchor Bob Kendrick reported on Bush's call for balancing the budget and curbing special-interest spending. But Kendrick failed to note the AP's reporting that Democrats remain skeptical those goals can be achieved under current Bush administration fiscal policy. 9News also did not mention that those goals represented a significant departure from Bush's policy under Republican congressional leadership, as did other reports.

From the January 3 broadcast of KUSA's 9News at 5 p.m.:

KENDRICK: At the Rose Garden today, President Bush challenged Democrats taking over Congress to join him in balancing the budget within five years and urged them to cut thousands of pet projects from future spending bills.

Top Democrats reacted cautiously, or not at all, to the plan, which assumes that Congress will renew tax rate cuts passed in 2001 and maintain tax cuts on investments, inheritances, and many other items.

Democrats have expressed doubt that these ambitious goals can be achieved if the Bush administration remains unyielding on its tax cut policies. As the AP article from which Kendrick read noted, Democrats “say at least some of the cuts need to be rolled back to be able to reach a broader agreement on the budget.”

Similarly, the January 4 edition of The Denver Post published a Washington Post article which noted that “Bush has never proposed a balanced budget since it went into deficit, never vetoed a spending bill when Republicans controlled Congress and offered little objection to earmarks until the issue gained political traction last year.” The article further stated, “The president's announcements were greeted by Democrats as 'me-tooism.' ”

A January 4 article from McClatchy Newspapers raised similar questions about Bush's appeal to the new Congress:

Bush, while urging bipartisanship, called for Congress to reform and slash spending “earmarks” for special pork-barrel projects and to balance the budget over the next five years, goals he'd ignored during his first six years in power, when Republicans were in charge of Capitol Hill.

Regarding Bush's push for a balanced budget, the McClatchy article item noted:

Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus when he took office in 2001, but the government has run mammoth deficits every year since. A recession, economic disruptions from the 2001 terrorist attacks, tax cuts and war spending all have contributed to the imbalance. Deficits shrank the past two years, but remained at almost $250 billion in fiscal 2006.

And as for Bush's stated desire to rein in earmark spending, the McClatchy article reported that while “Bush has never vetoed a spending bill ... earmarks exploded on his watch, to 13,012 last year.”

Moreover, 9News failed to report on a number of Democratic initiatives already on the table, including, according to the AP article, the extension of “a GOP-passed rule requiring the names of lawmakers sponsoring earmarks to be listed in reports accompanying spending bills”; “a one-year moratorium on lawmaker's pet projects as they clean up $463 billion worth of unfinished spending bills”; and re-establishment of “a rule requiring tax cuts or new spending on benefit programs such as Medicare to be accompanied by revenue increases or tax cuts elsewhere in the budget.”

Though the 9News report repeated wording from the AP article suggesting that “Democrats reacted cautiously, or not at all” to Bush's comments, the AP article -- as well as other reports -- suggested otherwise. The AP quoted incoming House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC), who said: "[Bush's] comments make us wary [and] suggest that his budget will still embody the policies that led to the largest deficits in history." The Washington Post article noted that “Democrats responded to Bush's comments with deep skepticism,” and quoted incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) as saying, “It's real hard to look at the man's record and take him seriously on these issues.”