A New York Times piece head­lined ​“left-lean­ing econ­o­mists ques­tion cost of Bernie Sanders’ plans” may have mis­led read­ers about the extent of skep­ti­cism among econ­o­mists who con­sid­er them­selves left-lean­ing. I can say this as a card-car­ry­ing left-lean­ing econ­o­mist who often talks to oth­er card-car­ry­ing left-lean­ing economists.

Sanders has a very ambitious agenda covering everything from universal Medicare, reforming the financial sector, paid sick days and vacation, free college, and universal childcare. If an economist, left-leaning or otherwise, can’t find some grounds for skepticism on any of these proposals they should probably be in a different line of work.

While there are undoubt­ed­ly many left of cen­ter econ­o­mists who have seri­ous objec­tions to the pro­pos­als Sanders has put for­ward, there are also many who have pub­licly indi­cat­ed sup­port for them. Remark­ably, none of those econ­o­mists were ref­er­enced in this arti­cle. In fact, to make its case on left of cen­ter econ­o­mists’ views, the NYT even pre­sent­ed the com­ments of Ezra Klein, who is nei­ther an econ­o­mist nor a lib­er­al, by his own iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

It also mis­rep­re­sent­ed the com­ments of Jared Bern­stein (a per­son­al friend), imply­ing that they were crit­i­cisms of Sanders’ pro­gram. In fact his com­ments were addressed to the analy­sis of Sanders’ pro­pos­als by Ger­ald Fried­man, an econ­o­mist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts who is not affil­i­at­ed with the Sanders campaign.

It also pre­sent­ed the com­ments of Brook­ings econ­o­mist Hen­ry Aaron about the views expressed by ​“oth­er econ­o­mists in a ​‘lefty chat group’ he joins online.” This would seem to vio­late the NYT​’s usu­al pol­i­cy on anony­mous sources.

Sanders has a very ambi­tious agen­da cov­er­ing every­thing from uni­ver­sal Medicare, reform­ing the finan­cial sec­tor, paid sick days and vaca­tion, free col­lege, and uni­ver­sal child­care. If an econ­o­mist, left-lean­ing or oth­er­wise, can’t find some grounds for skep­ti­cism on any of these pro­pos­als they should prob­a­bly be in a dif­fer­ent line of work.

These are all big ideas, each of which will face enor­mous polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion even if Bernie Sanders were in the White House. Sanders has not giv­en a ful­ly worked out pro­pos­al in any of these areas, nor is it rea­son­able to expect a ful­ly worked out pro­pos­al from a can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy. His cam­paign plat­form out­lines gen­er­al approach­es. In the event Sanders got to the White House, it would be nec­es­sary to draft ful­ly worked out leg­isla­tive lan­guage which would almost cer­tain­ly amount to hun­dreds of pages, and quite pos­si­bly thou­sands of pages, in each area. In addi­tion, what­ev­er he ini­tial­ly put on the table would have to be hag­gled over with Con­gress, even assum­ing that he had a much more sym­pa­thet­ic group than the cur­rent crew.

While it is nice that the NYT is sub­ject­ing Sanders’ views to seri­ous scruti­ny, it would be good if it also sub­ject­ed the views of oth­er can­di­dates to the same scruti­ny. For exam­ple, Sec­re­tary Clin­ton has indi­cat­ed a desire to give more oppor­tu­ni­ty to African Amer­i­cans and His­pan­ics, yet she has not com­ment­ed on the deci­sion by the Fed­er­al Reserve Board to raise inter­est rates at the end of last year. This rate hike was intend­ed to be the first of a sequence of rate hikes.

The pur­pose of rais­ing inter­est rates is to slow the econ­o­my and the rate of job cre­ation, osten­si­bly to pre­vent infla­tion. The peo­ple who will be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly hurt by slow­er job growth and high unem­ploy­ment are African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic. NYT read­ers would like­ly be inter­est­ed in know­ing how Sec­re­tary Clin­ton can rec­on­cile her com­mit­ment to help­ing African Amer­i­cans and His­pan­ics with her appar­ent lack of con­cern over the Fed’s deci­sion to raise inter­est rates and deny them jobs.

What­ev­er stan­dard of scruti­ny the NYT choos­es to apply to pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates it should apply them equal­ly. It is not good report­ing to apply one stan­dard to Sen­a­tor Sanders, and even invent­ing cre­den­tials to press its points, and then apply less­er stan­dards to the oth­er candidates.

This post first appeared at the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research’s Beat the Press blog.