John Dickerson, Slate's in-house king of false equivalence, thinks that despite the new administration's claims, their budget is just as a full of gimmicks (a word I've gotten really tired of typing in the last week) as the old ones. True? He bases his argument on a few points, one that is sort of halfway concerning and one that is a gimmick in and of itself. The first is that the administration's GDP growth estimates are much more optimistic than others -- for instance, in 2010 the administration predicts 3.2 percent GDP growth while CBO's most recent report suggests 1.5 percent. That would have a big effect on revenue. But instead of figuring out why the administration is making that projection -- I've got a call in -- Dickerson just makes a joke about bailouts for homeowners and others, suggesting that he hasn't done his homework and that he doesn't understand the administration's housing plan. But even if the projections are inflated, they're not hidden. Everyone is writing about them. Dickerson's second big complaint is that Obama messes with the ten-year baseline, including things that won't be affecting us down the road. Well, there are a few reasons why that is. One, I'm told, is that most budgets don't use ten year projections, and that the new administration is being more transparent in including those forecasts. Further, the ten year projections are not considered as important as earlier numbers because so many changes are likely to occur -- for one thing, there could be a different president in four years, and all economic forecasts get increasing hazy the further into the future you go. But the specific baseline tweaks that Dickerson objects to are ridiculous. He's mad because the budget "assumes the war will be funded at high levels for the next 10 years, even though Obama is planning to bring 100,000 troops home in the next 19 months." That's just wrong. The budget document makes clear that the contingency funding into the future is for all foreign operations, including Afghanistan, a conflict not likely to end soon, and the yearly funding level going forward is $80 billion less than the request for 2010. It's Dickerson who's pulling out the gimmicks here by pretending he doesn't know the money goes to Afghanistan as well as the the residual forces in Iraq, and implying that the funding remains at current levels. He might as well complain that the $250 billion placeholder for money that may or may not be needed by the financial system is a terrible gimmick because we don't know its necessary -- but I'm sure Dickerson and others would make a racket if that placeholder hadn't been included and Obama had to request an emergency appropriation. His other baseline objections? That the government is anticipating Medicare reimbursements that used to be kept off the books; Dickerson is unhappy because they call for higher reimbursements than the law requires, but the government has paid at those levels in the past (hence the need for health care reform) and they still represent taxpayer costs that should be included in the budget and not ignored. He also accuses Obama of assuming the Bush tax cuts will affect the budget after they are set to expire. In part, that's the ten-year baseline problem again, and in part they are included because some of the provisions will be modified and continue, like the roll-back on dividend tax rates, which will go up 5 percent but not return to Clinton-era rates when dividends were taxed like income. During the campaign, Dickerson liked to argue that John McCain and Obama had the same views on Iraq. Today Obama will be announcing his withdrawal plan. I doubt McCain would be doing the same today were he president. Now Dickerson -- who grudgingly comes around, in his last two paragraphs, to say that Obama's budget is much less disingenuous than Bush's -- is trying to convince his readers that Obama is being deceptive. Do you believe him?
-- Tim Fernholz
