NYT fact-checks McCain on taxes

The front page article in the New York Times on the presidential candidates' economic plans includes excellent fact-checking of two misleading Republican talking points:

[W]hile Mr. McCain has portrayed his tax cuts as benefiting the middle class, most of the benefits would go to the wealthy and to corporations, including his calls for the elimination of the alternative minimum tax.

...While Mr. McCain asserted in a speech in Washington on Tuesday that under Mr. Obama’s tax plan Americans of every background would see their taxes rise, Mr. Obama’s plan calls for cutting taxes on people earning less than $75,000 a year and for eliminating federal income taxes on elderly citizens who make less than $50,000 a year.

However, one problem with the lack of an institutionalized fact-checking operation is that the newspaper fails to draw on previous reporting, as in this passage from the story:

Experts say that both the McCain plan and the Obama plan would increase the deficit, and that neither man has adequately explained how his proposals would be paid for. But several analysts have said they believe that Mr. McCain’s plan would increase the deficit more, because of the size of the tax cuts he is seeking.

Why the vagueness about analysts who "believe" McCain's plan would "increase the deficit more"? It's not a close call -- the NYT reported back in April that the impact of Obama's plan "would be less than one-third that of the McCain plan."

Similarly, Media Matters points out that the NYT contradicted itself on Obama's health care plan. An article on Monday falsely suggested Obama and Clinton supported "government-run health care" even though the newspaper previously reported that McCain "inaccurately described the Democrats' health care proposals, using language that evokes the specter of socialized medicine."