An Impartial Observer Might Have Pause for Thought

Brad DeLong has the "Dead-Eye Dick" Cheney story covered and I presume the divergence between highly misleading initial reports and subsequent developments will get adequate coverage as well, so here's another of Cheney's recent activities. Menzie Chinn of Econbrowser looks with wary eyes at Cheney's call for dynamic scoring of tax proposals:

Dick Cheney on economics, by Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser: Vice President Cheney last week stated, according to Reuters:

"...it's time ... to consider using more dynamic analysis to measure the true impact of tax cuts on the American economy," ...

This view is, apparently, the motivation for the President's proposal for a new unit in the Treasury Department to implement dynamic scoring. From the Washington Post:

Treasury officials said yesterday that the president's proposed Division on Dynamic Analysis ... would go beyond the government's old "static" methods of analyzing proposed changes in tax policy only in terms of their direct effects on certain affected taxpayers. Instead, "dynamic" analysis looks at how tax changes cause consumers and businesses to behave differently in ways that affect the overall economy's growth.

Dynamic scoring makes intellectual sense. And in proper hands, and with proper deference to our uncertainty regarding the correct model and model parameters, it can be a useful approach. Indeed in the CBO's analysis of the President's proposals in 2003, the results of dynamic scoring were reported (although not incorporated in the official forecasts). As it turned out, half of the estimates from the "dynamic" models implied higher revenue losses than those from static models criticized by the Vice President.

Of course, if there is dynamic scoring of tax revenues, then for the sake of consistency, spending measures should be also scored. Even in real business cycle models with Ricardian equivalence, spending has effects (usually depressing economic welfare).

So dynamic scoring, in the hands of a professional staff cognizant of the extent of model uncertainty, well insulated from political pressures, would be a good thing. However, WMDs, "last throes of the insurgency", the "Clear Skies" initiative, might give an impartial observer pause for thought.

Update: More at Angry Bear

Comments

[anon]

Shooter Slips on a Silencer
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Who did this old guy think he was, coming between Dick Cheney and his helpless prey?

The luckless 78-year-old Texas lawyer, Harry Whittington, is in intensive care after a heart attack, with up to 200 pellets riddling his face and body — one stuck in his heart — from Dick Cheney's designer Perazzi Brescia shotgun. And still his friend, the vice president, is Swift-BB-ing him.

Private citizens have been enlisted to blame the victim. Maybe poor Mr. Whittington put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was, after all, behind Vice, not in front of him. And the hunter pulling the trigger is supposed to make sure he has a clear shot. Wouldn't it be, well, classy for Shooter to express just a bit of contrition and humility?

Instead, the usual sliming has begun, with the Cheney camp trying to protect the vice president by casting a veteran hunter as Elmer Dud.

Scott McClellan told the White House press corps that Katharine Armstrong, a lobbyist with government ties who owns the Texas ranch (and whose mother, Anne, was on the Halliburton board that hired Mr. Cheney as C.E.O.), "pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington when it came to notifying the others that he was there."

As the story of the weekend's bizarre hunting accident is wrenched out of the White House, the picture isn't pretty: With American soldiers dying in Iraq, Five-Deferment Dick "I Had Other Priorities in the 60's Than Military Service" Cheney gets his macho kicks gunning down little birds and the occasional old man while W. rides his bike, blissfully oblivious to any collateral damage. Shouldn't these guys work on weekends until we figure out how to fix Iraq, New Orleans, Medicare and gas prices?

...

Trent Lott joked in a meeting yesterday that Mr. Cheney was now the "shooter in chief," while other wags noted that Quayle was always a problem for Bushes.

Presidential staff members and lawmakers speculated yesterday about whether Shooter would resign and make room for Condi if Mr. Whittington did not survive. His death would trigger a more thorough police investigation and probably a grand jury.

"Are you crazy?" one Republican senator told a reporter. "He'd never quit." (Aaron Burr presided over the Senate after he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel.)

The shooter in chief can't quit because he is the administration. Who'd even tell him to quit? If necessary, he'd probably make W. take the fall.

Despite efforts by Mr. McClellan to joke and urge reporters to get back to "the pressing priorities of the American people," the hunting debacle once more showed Mr. Cheney running the imperial show.

He didn't talk to the sheriff for 14 hours, or even call the president to notify him after the 5:50 p.m. accident. Vice left that to Andy Card, who called Mr. Bush at 7:30 p.m. to say there had been a hunting accident, without mentioning that Vice was the gunman. Soon after that, Karl Rove called Mr. Bush back with that little detail.

A reporter, surprised, pressed Mr. McClellan: "The vice president did not call the president to tell him he was the shooter?"

Usually when there's a White House cover-up, the president's in on it.

[Emmanuel]

Dynamic scoring? Whatever happened to the flat(ulent) tax so beloved by the supercons?

[pgl]

More on this topic from Bruce Bartlett over at NRO who finds himself being chased by two Angrybears.