Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Paul Ryan's Budget Plan Relies on Economic Projections from Prominent Conservative Thinktank


The Heritage Foundation! The same group that predicted the Bush tax cuts would foster in a huge economic boom that would create 6.5 million jobs.

This is also interesting in the context of our discussion about think tanks. I wonder how this partnership was initiated. Did Ryan bring his budget to the Heritage Foundation for them to score it? Did the two work together to create it? I think it has to be one of these because of the way it was rolled out. Either way, it provides an interesting look at Congress-think tank relationships.

9 comments:

Ross Perot said...

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/04/facts_and_figures

Paul Ryan's budget proposal projects a 2.8 percent unemployment rate in 2021.

They must only be counting Sarah Palin-approved 'real Americans' in their calculations or something.

Ross Perot said...
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ND said...

A real unemployment rate of 2.8% is healthy for the economy. Such a low unemployment rate would suggest that people are not switching jobs.

ND said...

By healthy I mean unhealthy. Long day.

PL said...

btw, if you look at Heritage's analysis you can see that Ryan asked for their help on February 28th (probably to give him some idea of what CBO and JCT might say, as well as giving him alternative numbers he can grasp onto). I'm sure that Heritage and Ryan's House Budget staff had a very close and dynamic relationship on crafting this proposal- they'd do initial analysis of his ideas, offer feedback, and also offer their own ideas. Heritage also very clearly worked with Republican staff on the Welfare Reform Act of 2011. It's common practice.

PL said...

Btw, the people who Heritage purchased the economic model which they then used for their analysis (plugging in assumptions and estimated effects and what-not) have come out saying they don't understand how Heritage could get these numbers. Also, Heritage overnight changed their report overnight to no longer include the unemployment estimates- probably because they were so embarrassed by every economist out there pointing out how ridiculous their numbers were.

PL said...
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PL said...
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PL said...

And now Heritage has released revised estimates which dramatically reduces the impact of the Ryan budget on unemployment (looks to me like they reduced their estimate of the Ryan budget's impact by at least 50%). embarrassing! see here: http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/NewUnemploymentRateEstimates.pdf