David Cay Johnston, the board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., blamed racism and "fixed ideology that has no support in the empirical data" for opposition to increased taxes and spending.

In an appearance on the Thursday broadcast of MSNBC's "The Reid Report," he stated that Republicans oppose higher taxes and spending because "there's all sorts of areas where a fixed ideology that has no support in the empirical data gets into people's heads and that's what becomes important and there's also an element of racism in here."