As I predicted, Republicans are always glad to agree with the Congressional Budget Office if they see a political advantage. Here's Sen. Chuck Grassley:
"CBO's word is the gospel. Congress and the administration need to get the message. The buck stops with the American taxpayer. People can afford only so much government spending, even for the worthiest-sounding causes."The CBO report that the senator is referring to says this:
Although the economy is likely to continue to deteriorate for some time, the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and very aggressive actions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are projected to help end the recession in the fall of 2009. In CBO’s forecast, on a fourth-quarter-to-fourth-quarter basis, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP falls by 1.5 percent in 2009 before growing by 4.1 percent in both 2010 and 2011.
Grassley even requested a special analysis of the stimulus which had similar findings. When the senator voted against the ARRA, was he voting against the gospel?
More to the point: There are a lot of different institutions invoked as sources of authority, whether it is the CBO or the stock market. The former is certainly more useful than the latter, but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to live and die by your source. Which is why liberals aren't going around announcing the complete success of the Obama presidency, or the new banks plan, now that the stock market is improving -- the Dow is up 300 today thus far -- and why Grassley shouldn't be calling the CBO "gospel" if he only takes it seriously sometimes. Note that neither the administration nor its allies is attacking the CBO as a source of foolishness, but instead trying to identify why their analysis is different and how to deal with its political implications.
-- Tim Fernholz
