Brendan Nyhan

I’m serving as the discussant for a panel today on “The media and casualties” as part of a Triangle Institute for Security Studies conference on Casualties and Warfare. Here’s the lineup (without me):

Panel 7 – The Media and
Casualties
-Cori Dauber (University of North Carolina —
Chapel Hill)
-Robert Entman (George Washington University)
-Sean Aday (George Washington)

More soon…

My friend Chris Mooney has pulled a passage from Fred Barnes’ book Rebel-in-Chief describing President Bush’s meeting with fiction writer Michael Crichton about global warming:

Though he didn’t say so publicly, Bush is a dissenter on the theory of global warming. To the extent it’s a problem, Bush believes it can be solved by technology. He avidly read Michael Crichton’s 2004 novel State of Fear, whose villain falsifies scientific studies to justify draconian steps to curb global warming. Crichton himself has studied the issue extensively and concluded that global warming is an unproven theory and that the threat is vastly overstated. Early in 2005, political adviser Karl Rove arranged for Crichton to meet with Bush at the White House. They talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement. The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more.

And the administration’s postmodern approach to “truth” rolls forward. If you can’t find scientists who agree with you, get a hack novelist! You really can’t make this stuff up. (Mooney’s critique of State of Fear is here.)

As David Brooks writes today about the Cheney shooting ($):

In normal life, people would look at this event and see two decent men caught in a twist of fate. They would feel concern for the victim and sympathy for the man who fired the gun.

But we in Washington are able to rise above the normal human reaction. We have our jobs. We have our roles.

On the other side of the op-ed page, Bob Herbert illustrates Brooks’ point perfectly, using the Cheney hunting accident as a pretext to call for the Vice President’s resignation ($).

Coming soon from Herbert: How Cheney’s failure to buy his $7 hunting stamp illustrates his reckless attitude toward fiscal policy.

The latest version of the Progress Report from the disreputable Center for American Progress includes a bunch of phony quotes from President Bush, which CAP bills as a “translated” version of his priorities in his budget:

BUSH:
‘TOO
MANY
POOR
KIDS
GO
TO
COLLEGE’…

BUSH:
‘OIL
COMPANIES
AREN’T
MAKING
ENOUGH
MONEY’…

BUSH:
‘LEAVING
NO
CHILD
BEHIND
ISN’T
WORTH
THE
COST’…

BUSH:
‘NOT
ENOUGH
PEOPLE
ARE
ENTERING
OUR
COUNTRY
UNDETECTED’…

BUSH:
‘VETERANS
SHOULD
PAY
MORE
FOR
HEALTH
CARE’…

BUSH:
‘TRUST
ME
—
TERRORISTS
WILL
NEVER
TRY
TO
HIDE
EXPLOSIVES
IN
AIRLINE
CARGO’…

BUSH:
‘I
STILL
WANT
TO
PRIVATIZE
SOCIAL
SECURITY’…

BUSH:
‘DRINKING
CLEAN
WATER IS
A
PRIVILEGE’…

BUSH:
‘MY
HIGHEST
PRIORITY:
TAX
CUTS
FOR
THE
WEALTHIEST’…

Making up stuff and putting it in bold quotes is just a nasty cheap shot. I wouldn’t be surprised if lefty CAP supporters end up thinking these are real quotations.

Elite conservatives are very worried about 2006. So how does Paul Weyrich, the influential conservative outsider, respond? By telling his followers that House Democrats will impeach President Bush if they take back the House:

The second reason [to vote in 2006] can be reduced to a single word. Impeachment. Right now leftist Members of the House are meeting regularly with outside groups such as Moveon.org and are preparing for impeachment. It looked bizarre, too, when Father Robert F. Drinan (D-MA) and a handful of others, such as John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), in 1972 similarly were planning for the impeachment of President Nixon. When the moment of truth came they were ready.

I am here to tell you that if Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is Speaker of the House come next year George W. Bush will be impeached. It just takes a majority. There still is residual anger over the impeachment of President Clinton. I may have differences with President Bush (it is difficult to forgive his having signed McCain-Feingold, which is causing so many problems relating to free speech) but still I do not want to see the country, especially during a time of war, go through impeachment. It would tear America apart and give aid and comfort to our enemies.

Perhaps you haven’t heard it before. Well, you have now. Impeachment. Coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now. If the President and Congress get their act together, and with the possibility of another Supreme Court appointment in the background, and impeachment on the horizon, maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all. John Gizzi would not mind one bit having sounded the alarm.

Does anyone actually think the House Democrats would impeach Bush on a narrow party-line vote knowing they will fail to convict in the Senate? Barring some sort of blockbuster revelation, this seems improbable. From Weyrich’s perspective, of course, the facts are immaterial; the point is to get the base motivated, and the prospect of a Speaker Pelosi-led impeachment might be quite effective.

David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union, warns that a McCain presidential run could lead to a Nader-style third party challenge from an anti-immigrant candidate:

Republican divisions also loom in the 2008 presidential race. Arizona Sen. John McCain has joined forces with Kennedy on a guest-worker plan that is anathema to some conservatives. Assuming he runs in ’08, McCain is likely to face some GOP opponents who oppose guest workers and favor the so-called “enforcement first” approach.

Keene, an organizer of last week’s conference, said the issue could hurt McCain’s quest for the nomination, but he voiced doubt that immigration would be a defining issue in the GOP contest. The bigger threat for Republicans, said Keene, is that the nomination of someone such as McCain could inspire a Tancredo-style or “Ross Perot-like” third-party candidate who siphons off a small percentage of conservatives upset about immigration.

And it seems just as likely that a McCain nomination could provoke a general third party “true conservative” challenge from, say, a Roy Moore-style social conservative. These scenarios should give pause to those who believe he would be such a strong candidate in the general election.

There are now 50 pages touting the mythical “Bush Boom” on National Review’s website. Meanwhile, as Jonathan Chait points out, the net effect of President Bush’s economic policies on net jobs is a staggering negative 800,000 once you subtract those created as a result of government spending:

[T]he question becomes whether Bush’s tax cuts have really created new jobs.

The White House and its allies like to focus on the approximately 4 million jobs that have appeared since the 2003 tax cut. If the year 2003 sounds suspicious, it ought to. Bush first promised that his 2001 tax cuts would create jobs, and then he promised the same thing with a new round in 2002. Instead, the job market kept shrinking. Bush cut taxes again in 2003, and this time jobs came back.

Of course, the job market was bound to bounce back sometime, so if you keep cutting taxes every year, you can just point to your last one and say it did the trick. (Or else all those previous tax cuts failed utterly, in which case we ought to repeal them.)

So anyway, the true measure is that the economy has created about 2 million new jobs since the first Bush tax cuts in 2001. It’s not that impressive of a number. Through the first six years of the Clinton administration, nearly 18 million new jobs were created. Do I think all those jobs happened because of Clinton’s policies? Not even close. But if you’re going to credit Bush’s tax cuts with every new job that’s appeared, Clinton’s policies (including tax hikes) deserve the same credit.

What makes the 2 million new jobs even less impressive is that, as Lee Price of the Economic Policy Institute notes, over that time span 2.8 million new jobs have been created as a result of government spending. A majority of those jobs are in defense — mainly military contractors. Others have come through the spending boom in other areas since Bush took office.

Needless to say, it’s not the magical incentive effects of tax cuts that created those jobs. It’s old-fashioned big government. If you subtract the government-created jobs from the total, you’re left with … a negative 800,000 new jobs, give or take.

How exactly are tax cuts generating so many jobs that they increase revenue again?

In an editorial (sub. required) praising the White House’s decision to open an office dedicated to “dynamic” estimates of the effects of tax cut on revenues, the Wall Street Journal editorial board makes yet another disingenuous claim:

Expect to read in the coming days from liberal critics that supply-siders are hijacking Treasury to show that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” But the real goal here is accurate score-keeping that takes into account the real impact that taxes have on the economy. And no supply-sider we know — and we know them all — claims that all tax cuts pay for themselves on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

The WSJ goes on to write that “Not all tax cuts are created economically equal because they have different effects on incentives,” differentiating between tax rebates, which they see as ineffectual, and cuts in rates on marginal income and capital gains. Marginal income rate cuts, they write, “recoup much of the revenue that ‘static’ models estimate they will lose,” and “[c]uts in capital gains tax rates have had an even larger revenue payback over the years.” Strangely, however, the WSJ shies away from claiming that any of these types of tax cuts increase revenue.

In short, the WSJ wants to disavow the claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves on a dollar-for-dollar basis” by differentiating between “all” tax cuts and those proposed by conservative politicians. But this is simple rhetorical misdirection. The reason “liberal critics” might claim that “supply-siders are hijacking Treasury to show that ‘tax cuts pay for themselves’” is because (as I pointed out yesterday)
Dick Cheney said exactly that:

The President’s tax policies have strengthened the economy, as we knew they would. And despite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues… [I]t’s time to reexamine our assumptions and to consider using more dynamic analysis to measure the true impact of tax cuts on the American economy.

Recognizing this, the President’s recently submitted budget would create a new Dynamic Analysis Division within the Treasury Department to analyze major tax proposals. The evidence is in, it’s time for everyone to admit that sensible tax cuts increase economic growth, and add to the federal treasury.

More importantly, the editorial board and its political allies have repeatedly claimed over the last six years that tax cuts increase revenue, both in general and with regard to the Bush tax cuts in particular:

Vice President Cheney, February 2006: “[D]espite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues.”

President Bush, February 2006: “One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it’s helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That’s kind of counter-intuitive, isn’t it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you’re going to have less revenue. No, that’s not what happened. What happened was we cut taxes and in 2004, revenues increased 5.5 percent. And last year those revenues increased 14.5 percent, or $274 billion. And the reason why is cutting taxes caused the economy to grow, and as the economy grows there is more revenue generated in the private sector, which yields more tax revenues.”

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, January 2006: “[T]he tax cuts have even helped reduce the federal budget deficit through record revenue growth fueled by an expanding economy.”

Rep. David Drier, December 2005: “By cutting taxes, you grow the economy, and you generate an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury.”

Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, August 2005: “Experience demonstrates time and time again — the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts of the 1920s, the Kennedy cuts of the ’60s, the Reagan cuts of the ’80s and the Bush reductions of 2003 — that lower tax rates lead to more economic activity, which leads to more government revenue.”

President Bush, August 2005: “The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury.”

Wall Street Journal editorial board, July 2005: “Not even the most unbridled supply-sider predicted that President Bush’s investment tax cuts would unleash such a spurt of tax receipts this year. But thanks to sustained economic growth, more Americans working and improved business profits, individual income tax receipts have shot up by 17.6%. Even more astonishing is the nearly 41% spike in corporate revenues. There’s a fiscal lesson here that bears repeating: The best way to grow tax revenues is to grow the tax base, and that is what has happened this year.”

Influential conservative pundit Stephen Moore, June 2005: “In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan chopped the highest personal income tax rate from the confiscatory 70% rate that he inherited when he entered office to 28% when he left office and the resulting economic burst caused federal tax receipts to almost precisely double: from $517 billion to $1,032 billion.”

President Bush, May 2003: “And the other way to deal with the deficit is to put policies in place that increase the revenues coming into the Treasury. And the best way to encourage revenues coming into the Treasury is to promote policy which encourages economic growth and vitality. A growing economy is going to produce more revenues for the federal Treasury. The way to deal with the deficit is not to be timid on the growth package; the way to deal with the deficit is to have a robust enough growth package so we get more revenues coming into the federal Treasury.”

Vice President Cheney, January 2003: “The President’s proposals will reduce the tax burden on the American people by $670 billion over the next 10 years. By leaving more money in the hands of the people who earn it, people who will spend and invest and save and add momentum to our recovery, we’ll help create more jobs and ultimately increase tax revenues for the government.”

Vice President Cheney, January 2003: “The President’s growth package will reduce the tax burden on the American people by $98 billion this year and $670 billion over the next ten years. But the actual impact on the deficit will be considerably smaller than the static projections because the President’s package will generate new growth, it will expand the tax base and thus increase tax revenue to the federal government ultimately.”

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, January 2003: “The entire [tax cut] package the President does believe will lead to growth, which will over time grow the economy, create additional revenues for the federal government and pay for itself.”

President Bush, January 2003: “[These tax cut proposals] are essential for the long run, as well — to lay the groundwork for future growth and future prosperity. That growth will bring the added benefit of higher revenues for the government — revenues that will keep tax rates low, while fulfilling key obligations and protecting programs such as Medicare and Social Security.”

President Bush, November 2002: “Well, we have a deficit because tax revenues are down. Make no mistake about it, the tax relief package that we passed — that should be permanent, by the way — has helped the economy, and that the deficit would have been bigger without the tax relief package.”

I can’t see why anyone would think that supply-siders believe tax cuts increase revenue!

On Wednesday, President Bush claimed that tax cuts increase revenue. On Thursday, as the Washington Post reports, Vice President Cheney did the same thing:

Vice President Cheney said Thursday night that the verdict is in before the Bush administration’s new tax analysis shop has even opened for business: Tax cuts boost federal government revenue.

That assertion won applause from his audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, but it is a long-standing source of debate among many economists and tax experts at a time of rising federal budget deficits.

Cheney touted President Bush’s recently announced proposal to create a tax analysis division as a move toward providing more evidence for the administration’s side of the argument.

“The president’s tax policies have strengthened the economy, as we knew they would,” Cheney told the conference, according to a text posted on the White House’s Web site. “And despite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues.”

Cheney said some forecasters have underestimated the degree to which tax cuts would stimulate economic growth and tax revenue.

“It’s time to reexamine our assumptions and to consider using more dynamic analysis to measure the true impact of tax cuts on the American economy,” Cheney said, explaining why Bush has proposed the new Treasury Department division. “The evidence is in, it’s time for everyone to admit that sensible tax cuts increase economic growth and add to the federal treasury.”

Creating a “tax analysis” office to reach a pre-ordained conclusion tells you everything you need to know about the White House’s postmodern approach to empirical analysis. It’s faith-based economics.

In reality, there’s a complicated debate about the magnitude of the revenue losses attributable to tax cuts, but almost no professional economist believes tax cuts increase revenue overall. In fact, as Jonathan Chait pointed out in The New Republic, even the proponents of supply-side economics now disavow this claim.

Not surprisingly, President Bush’s economists agree with this professional consensus. As I noted on Spinsanity, the 2003 Economic Report of the President (PDF) states that tax cuts are “unlikely” to pay for themselves:

The modest effect of government debt on interest rates does not mean that tax cuts pay for themselves with higher output. Although the economy grows in response to tax reductions (because of higher consumption in the short run and improved incentives in the long run), it is unlikely to grow so much that lost tax revenue is completely recovered by the higher level of economic activity.

In addition, as I pointed out in a later Spinsanity column, former Bush Council of Economic Advisers chair N. Gregory Mankiw also stated during his confirmation hearings that he “remain[ed] skeptical” of claims that tax cuts were “completely self-financing.”

Post reporter Dana Milbank noted the contradiction between the Economic Report of the President and Bush’s statements in a February 2003 piece that cited my article, yet Niall Henderson, the author of the article about Cheney’s speech, gives readers almost no indication how implausible the views of the President and Vice President really are.

Instead, Henderson gives readers this weak passage, which is almost a parody of “he said,” “she said” journalism:

Some tax-cut proponents contend that tax cuts can essentially pay for themselves by spurring such strong economic growth that the additional tax revenue more than offsets the money lost to the cuts.

Many economists dispute that, arguing that the effects of tax cuts depend on how they are structured, on economic circumstances and on many other variables.

“All economists agree tax policy has an effect on the economy. The hard thing is to figure out how to measure these effects in the real world,” said Leonard E. Burman, co-director of the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.

Is that really the best the Post can do?

This statement from GOP chairman Ken Mehlman is just ridiculous.

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared Friday that Democrats who have condemned the Bush administration’s controversial eavesdropping program may not be suited to safeguard Americans against terror attacks.

“We do not and we never should question these Democrat leaders’ patriotism, but we do question their judgment and we do question their ability to keep the American people safe,” he said. “These are people we know love their country, the question is: Can they protect it?”

Let’s go to the evidence (see here, here and here for details). Maybe Mehlman can explain to me exactly how these statements don’t question Democrats’ patriotism:

Attorney General John Ashcroft (December 2001): “To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”

Rep. Tom Davis (February 2002): Tom Daschle’s “divisive comments [alleging a lack of success in the war on terror] have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country.”

White House communications director Dan Bartlett (May 2002): Democratic questions about warnings President Bush received before 9/11 “are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.”

Senator Orrin Hatch (September 2004): Democrats are “consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving” in Iraq.

Rep. Geoff Davis (November 2005): “[T]he liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound, fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies.”

Speaker Dennis Hastert (December 2005): Howard Dean’s statement that “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong,” according to Hastert, “made it clear the Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender.”

GOP chairman Ken Mehlman (December 2005): Dean’s statement “sends the wrong message to our troops, the wrong message to the enemy, the wrong message to the Iraqi people.”

President Bush (January 2006): “[The American people] know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

Other than that, Mehlman is right on target!

Postscript: The GOP chairman also repeated one of the most disingenuous rhetorical questions in recent history:

“Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they should hang up when those terrorists call their sleeper cells in the United States?” he said, referring to the House minority leader and the Democratic National Committee chairman.

As I said before, Pelosi and Dean don’t want NSA to “hang up” when terrorists call sleeper cells in the US; they want NSA to get a warrant.