Continued Deficit Misdirection from the Bush Administration I’m amazed that they can continue to parrot this line: Treasury’s Snow blames war on terror for US deficit WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Thursday that current budget deficits, while unwelcome, were necessary because the United States was pushed into a […]

Greenspan Gets Even More Explicit Greenspan elaborated further on his opinion regarding the deficit during continued testimony on Capitol Hill today. I suppose that he wanted to make it crystal clear to those who didn’t read my interpretation of his remarks yesterday that he is on the side of the tax-cutting Republicans in Washington: “In […]

Greenspan on the Deficit, Part II Greenspan’s testimony this morning to Congress indicated no regret about the Bush tax cuts. I was totally wrong when I implied in my morning lead-in post to his testimony that I thought he might come out against the Bush tax cuts. I have to say that I’m a little […]

Better Late Than Never Today, the Washington Post writes on Bush’s lie (“If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined”): “If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my […]

Greenspan on the Deficit Back in 2001, Greenspan was a tentative supporter of tax cuts. In his now-famous (to fiscal policy wonks, anyway) remarks to the Senate Budget Committee of January 25, 2001, he basically said that he liked the idea of getting rid of the projected massive budget surplus through tax cuts – though […]

Kerry Wins Wow, Kerry smashed Clark and Edwards in two Southern states. In Virginia, Kerry smashed Clark and Edwards, combined (52% to 36%); in Tennessee, the two Southerners combined for 49%, exceeding Kerry’s 42%. So for Edwards to have any chance at all, Clark will have to send every one of his supporters Edwards’ way, […]

Incompetence Take a look at Kash’s last post (two below this one), which contains yet another great graph. How could any group of employees be as consistently and dramatically wrong as the administration’s employment forecasters and still keep their jobs?(*) AB (*) Ok, so O’Neill, Hubbard and Lindsey are gone, but that’s had no discernible […]

Intended and Actual Spending Kash, Brad, and I have been hamering Bush’s “15% discretionary spending growth” lie pretty hard. Now even the conservative/libertarians are getting in on the game. Posting on the subject, Jacob Levy at the Volkh Conspiracy writes this rather damning paragraph: Authorization is not spending. A question about whether one is spending […]

The CEA’s Forecast Record If you’re a regular visitor to this or Brad DeLong’s site, you probably know all about the White House’s unlikely forecast for job creation that was released this week. To put it in context, I thought it might be helpful to compare this year’s forecast of job creation by the White […]

Josh Marshall I have to quote this one in full: Given the president’s record as a businessman, and since he’s now run the country hopelessly into debt, isn’t it about time he sells the country off to some rich friends who will swallow the loss so he can move on to greener pastures? Now that’s […]