Media EPIC FAIL: WHERE are CBO staff or CBO reports on fiscal policy options? IMO, reporting on

[ProgressiveEconomist]

reporting on US fiscal policy options, even on otherwise fine outlets such as Rachel Maddow, has been an EPIC FAIL.

Have you ever seen Doug Elmendorf, director of the CBO, explain their findings on broadcast TV or cable?

The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan group of the best economists and analysts whose mission is to inform decisionmaking in Congress. Yet its people and its reports are COMPLETELY MISSING from thousands of hours of "coverage" of crucial issues such as extension of Bush-era extra income tax breaks for the top 2 percent.

If you want to inform yourself about this issue, you've got to DO IT YOURSELF!

NY Times contributor David Cay Johnston is the best available guide I've found to getting credible information.

How many "reporters" on Fox "News", CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and even CNBC do you think have seen the key CBO document I've posted as Reply #1 (excerpted from the PDF downloadable at http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10803 , simplified, and formatted in plain text)?

IMO, if they were even minimally informed about the best available nonpartisan analysis, they would not allow Mitch McConnell to repeat, over and over again for months leading up to a crucial election, long-debunked lies about how extending income tax breaks PERMANENTLY for the top 2 percent is "the best way to create jobs and stimulate consumer demand."

In fact, as shown in Reply #1, the CBO estimated back in January 2010, and still maintains, that extension of income tax breaks has THE WORST "bang for the buck" and highest cost per job created of 11 possible fiscal policy options.

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

1. ESTIMATED EFFECTS OF SELECTED POLICY OPTIONS ON OUTPUT AND EMPLOYMENT

Below is my simplification of the summary table on CBO PDF
page 26.  IMO anyone who does not know the figures below
CANNOT express an informed opinion on proposals to extend
income tax cuts for the top 2 percent.

Notice that, of the five policy choices listed below,
"reducing income taxes in 2011" is the ONLY option
with a "bang for the buck" high estimate below 1.00.
 In other words, it is the ONLY option that CBO estimates
CANNOT efficiently help economic growth.  Notice also that it
is the least efficient way to create jobs, costing between
$250,000 to $1 million per job, compared to as little as
$62,500 (= $1 million / 16) for the most efficient options.

From the PDF downloadable at
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10803 :

"POLICIES FOR INCREASING ECONOMIC GROWTH AND EMPLOYMENT
IN 2010 AND 2011, p 26"

ESTIMATED EFFECTS OF SELECTED POLICY OPTIONS ON OUTPUT AND
EMPLOYMENT

(1) "Bang for the buck", estimated as gross domestic
product (GDP) 2010-2015 WITH a policy, per dollar of GDP
without the policy.

(2) Cumulative employment effect 2010-2015 per million dollars
of total budgetary cost.  Estimated as years of
full-time-equivalent employment (FTE-years) with a policy
minus FTE-years without the policy. An FTE-year is 40 hours of
employment per week for one year. For example, four people
working 20 hours per week for six months equals one FTE-year.

 ....(1) .......(2)
 0.70-1.90 .... 6-15 .... Increasing Aid to the Unemployed
 0.40-1.30 .... 7-16 .... Reducing Payroll Taxes for Firms
Increasing Payroll
 0.50-1.20 .... 4-10 .... Investing in Infrastructuree

 0.40-1.10 .... 3-09 .... Non-Infrastructure Aid to States
 0.10-0.40 .... 1-04 .... Reducing Income Taxes in 2011

Source: Congressional Budget Office.

Notes: Additional details on each policy option are provided
on pages 19…26 of the CBO pdf.

The ranges between low and high estimates are designed to
encompass most economists� views.

In estimates of the effects on output and employment, the
total budgetary cost is the amount of tax revenue or budget
authority over the full duration of the policies� effects
unless otherwise specified.

All years are calendar years.

Unless otherwise specified, spending policy options are
assumed to provide budget authority as of April 2010, and tax
policy options are assumed to be in effect for 2010 only.

The income-tax extension option assumes extension for all
income classes and includes the effects of extending higher
exemption amounts for the alternative minimum tax in 2010.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. How many 'reporters' have allowed Rs to use the phrase 'WASTEFUL STIMULUS SPENDING' without

without bringing up these CBO estimates to rebut their guests? IMO the hosts of all the Sunday talk shows over the past 10 menths have shown abject incompetence. According to these estimates, the best available, saying "wasteful stimulus spending"--compared to tax cut extension--is Orwellian doublespeak.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. President Obama could implement the Infrastructure spending option by Executive Order

using hundreds of billions of returned and unspent TARP funds, according to top law professors and legal association executives. Republicans would HOWL, but he need not get any approval from Congress to do so. My advice would be for the President to focus his State of the Union message on the jobs crisis and announce a bold and dramatic Emergency infrastructure spending Executive Order--a 21st-century version of FDR's WPA--at that time. If it works--and the economy improves by the 21012 elections--it could propel Democrats back into power over every branch of the federal government oexcept the USSC.

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9513675 .

If the upper-end CBO estimates of "bang for the buck" and/or jobs created in Reply #1 are correct, this option could improve the economy enough for voters to propel Democrats back into control in 2012. Its estimated effects on output and employment are exceeded only by extending unemployment benefits and cutting employer payroll taxes.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. For even more details on a variant of the employer payroll taxcut option, see my GD

thread at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9497641 .

[ProgressiveEconomist]

2. David Cay Johnston: Republican tax proposals are 'economic madness ... policy divorced from empirica...

policy divorced from empirical evidence'

Johnston is by far the best reporter I've seen striving to make arcane tax issues accessible to ordinary people who want to be informed with the best available data, rather than unjustified political slogans:

From Johnston's blog site, at http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/permalink/chas-89lpz9?opendocument :

"The hard, empirical facts: The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare  while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals. So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks? It is one thing for Fox News to treat these policies as successful, but what of the rest of what Sarah Palin calls with some justification the 'lamestream media,' who treat these policies as worthy ideas?

The Republican leadership is like the doctors who believed bleeding cured the sick. When physicians bled George Washington, he got worse, so they increased the treatment until they bled him to death. Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more. Those who ignore evidence and pledge blind faith in policy based on ideological fantasy are little different from the clerics who made Galileo Galilei confess that the sun revolves around the earth. The Capitol Hill and media Republicans differ only in not threatening death to those who deny their dogma.

How much more evidence do we need that we made terrible and costly mistakes in 2001 and 2003?"

[ProgressiveEconomist]

4. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

12. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

13. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

14. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

19. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

21. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

16. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

17. Kick!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

18. Kick!

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, ProgressiveEconomist.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Thanks for the K&R, Uncle Joe

[jpgray]

9. CBO is great, but remember to carefully read their reports

When asked to study a particular question, they will use assumptions or restrictions as defined by those who ask. Paul Ryan's "road map," for example, required the CBO to look solely at spending cuts in its analysis, and did not include revenue loss from tax cuts. So when Ryan or whoever claims that the CBO has shown an economic plan reduces the deficit by 50%, that may not provide a complete picture.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

10. Great point. CBO can be forced to 'stack the deck' in favor of tricksters like Ryan. But

no such deck-stacking is going on here. Read the full PDF. It's only 34 pages, and it appears to me to be some of CBO's finest work ever. David Cay Johnston and other highly respoected sources would not be citing these figures repeatedly for months if anyone had raised red flags about them.

[Poboy]

20. recommend.

[Poboy]

22. kick.

[Poboy]

23. up

[coti]

24. Yeah, that's not what our media does now. They don't actually inform people about issues.

They just mediate talking point arguments and hype-up horseraces.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

25. Exactly. Infotainment has destroyed real news. Katie is the new Cronkite, and Bryant

now competes with his brother Gregg for sports news jobs.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

27. Kick!

[TheKentuckian]

26. Ha! Surely you don't think they mean to inform on economic issues?

Its hard to call failure on something that isn't intended in the first place

[sabrina 1]

28. Too late to recommend, this should be at the top of the

Rec list.

Yet its people and its reports are COMPLETELY MISSING from thousands of hours of "coverage" of crucial issues such as extension of Bush-era extra income tax breaks for the top 2 percent.

I thought I was the only one who noticed that. WHY are Democrats not exposing this lie?

I'll repeat it again:

The Bush Tax Cuts DID NOT create jobs. That is a lie

There should be an OP on this every day. And yes, I am surprised that neither Keith or Rachel have covered the report in your OP. And that is not the only report. It is backed up by some of the best economists and by the statistics, in the country.

:kick: for a very important post.

[Catherina]

29. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours n/t