For those of you who do not know, CBO stands for "Congressional Budget Office." Even Slate (not a bastion of conservatism) says the CBO offers the most accurate forecasts: "...the administration's forecasts were the least accurate and the CBO's were the most accurate." That conclusion was based on a 1979-1997 study. Has anything been found to refute that conclusion?
On November 22, 2011, from Politico, we got this headline, "CBO: Stimulus added up to 3.3M jobs". The picture opening the article was captioned, "The CBO report estimates that 500,000 to 3.3 million jobs were created by the stimulus". Wow! 500,000 to 3.3 million jobs is a big range. At least we now know what Politico means when it says "up to." Is this an example of MSM bias? You make the call. On November 26, Blogcritics published the article, "CBO Says Stimulus a Drag on Economy," and YouAreA_RightWingLiar, in comment #1, also posted Nov 26, wrote, "That is a total lie. The CBO said just the opposite. Damn right-wingers lie," and citing the same Politico article as proof that I was incorrect!
The CBO issues monthly reports, so again this month, December, it has issued another report, saying that the stimulus was even less effective than previously believed. Before all of you Obama Kool-Aid drinkers have a hissy-fit and stop reading here, let me get to the purpose of this article.
The Politico article specified a high CBO estimate of jobs created to be 3.3 million, unchanged from previous CBO estimates. It also provides a low estimate of 500,000 jobs. Previous CBO low estimates were as high as 1.2 million jobs. So what, you say, they are only estimates. That is precisely my point! They are estimates, but government policy is established and money we don't have is spent based on those estimates. Again, you say, "So what?Policies and money expenditures have to be based on something." The White House provides the methodology the Obama administration used in 2009 to estimate jobs created or saved, and that methodology has not changed!
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