Effectiveness of the Stimulus: Washington Post Has Not Heard of the Congressional Budget Office
Apparently word of CBO’s existence has not made its way to Fox on 15th Street. How else can we explain the Post’s failure to mention CBO’s analysis of the impact of the stimulus in an article reporting on a speech by Christine Romer, President Obama’s departing chief economist?
The article reported Romer’s view that the stimulus helped keep the economy from sliding into a depression and that additional stimulus would boost growth. It then tells readers that Republicans oppose additional stimulus and “argue that Democrats have run up record budget deficits without improving the economy.”
This is where a serious newspaper would report the assessment of the stimulus by independent analysts, most obviously CBO. In an analysis released last month CBO estimated that the stimulus increased output by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent. It also calculated that the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.8 and 1.7 percentage points. In other words, the CBO estimates imply that unemployment would be between 10.3 percent and 11.2 percent today without the stimulus. This would have been useful information to provide readers.
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Posted on September 23, 2010 at 5:09 pm
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