Trashing Gephardt (3/6)

By Bryan Keefer

On February 19, Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) announced that he was entering a crowded field of Democrats contending for their party's nomination for president in 2004. No sooner had Gephardt announced, however, then pundits began distorting his positions.

As a relatively minor part of his announcement, Gephardt included a proposal to institute some sort of global minimum wage through the World Trade Organization, which would vary by country. His statement was quite clear: "As President, I'll press the World Trade Organization to establish an international minimum wage — different for each country, but always high enough so we don't compete with slave, sweatshop and child labor around the world."

Yet just two days after Gephardt's announcement, Mary McGrory wrote in a Washington Post column that Gephardt "caused no sleepless nights at the White House when he proclaimed his availability. Terminally earnest, he announced as his goal the enactment of a 'global minimum wage,' hardly a grabber in these times."

By suggesting that Gephardt's "goal" in running for President is to enact a global minimum wage, McGrory is wildly distorting the amount of emphasis Gephardt has given to this proposal. In the speech announcing his candidacy, Gephardt devoted a total of four sentences to the subject. The vast bulk of his remarks were focused on proposals concerning health care, education, Iraq, national defense, and other issues. For example, he spent eleven sentences on his proposal to recruit more teachers and raise their pay. By misrepresenting the emphasis of Gephardt's candidacy, McGrory tries to make him look "earnest" and boring.

Reporter/pundit Donald Lambro of the Washington Times has also twisted Gephardt's position on a global minimum wage. In a February 27 column, Lambro made it sound as if Gephardt had proposed that a single wage be mandated worldwide, rather than varying by country:

[Gephardt's] most bizarre proposal: asking the World Trade Organization to impose a minimum wage on all our trading partners, no matter how poor their economy is. It is hard enough for the WTO to iron out trade disputes, now we're going to ask it to take away each country's sovereignty over its labor policies?

Lambro’s description of a wage that would apply to "all our trading partners, no matter how poor their economy is" suggests that Gephardt has proposed a single, universal minimum wage applicable to every country - a deeply misleading characterization of his actual plan.

Such distortion of the basic facts of Gephardt’s plan is irresponsible. Hopefully these attacks will not launch more of the dysfunctional and dishonest media narratives like those that swirled around candidates in the 2000 campaign.

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3/6/2003 10:16:19 AM EST |

Bush's Blue Chip deception (3/2)

By Bryan Keefer

Three times in the past two weeks, President Bush has suggested that the economic projections put out by the Blue Chip Economic Forecast, a survey of 53 private-sector economists, are predicated on the passage of his tax cut proposals. Yet as Newsday and others have pointed out, it is not clear that the economists surveyed based their predictions on the passage of any stimulus bill, let alone Bush's. Nor is this the first time that the administration has misled the public by falsely citing experts and technical reports.

On February 21, Bush claimed that "There's a blue chip survey from leading economists that predict growth this year of 3.3 percent ... But I want to remind the members of Congress who are going to be studying whether or not there needs to be tax relief that part of the fine print of this prediction is this: the economists are basing this prediction on Congress passing tax relief this year. In other words, inherent in the 3.3 percent prediction of economic growth is that Congress acts in a positive way ... My point to you is that this plan makes sense ... [I]t makes sense when analyzed by the economists behind the [B]lue [C]hip forecasts."

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer made the same claim in a press briefing just prior to Bush's speech: "The Blue Chip Forecast, which projects growth at 3.3 percent, is predicated on Congress passing a significant tax reduction plan in 2003, with a substantial amount of tax relief effective in 2003 ... If Congress were to fail to pass the President's plan, or fail to pass significant tax relief in 2003, the private sector forecasters would be forced to lower their estimates of growth for the economy, which means fewer jobs getting created."

As reported by Newsday, Randall Moore, editor of the Blue Chip Forecast, took umbrage with Bush's claim. According to the paper, Moore told the White House that "It looks like you guys are saying the Blue Chip endorses the president's proposal. That's not the case."

Bush spokeswoman Claire Buchan responded that Bush's claim was based on a line in the January Blue Chip Forecast which noted the "likelihood that some version of the Bush administration's latest stimulus package will be enacted by this spring." (Moore confirmed the truth of this citation in an interview). Yet the Blue Chip did not directly ask the economists it surveyed if it took passage of a tax cut into account. When Bloomberg News followed up with two of the economists surveyed by the Blue Chip, they gave different answers about the extent to which they factored the passage of a tax cut into their latest predictions. Michael Moran of Daiwa Securities America Inc. told the reporters that he did not take a tax cut into account in making his predictions, and John Ryding of Bear, Stearns & Co., claimed that he had factored in "something more like half the package."

Moreover, the February Blue Chip Forecast notes that "Unknown, however, is the extent to which the current consensus forecast of DPI [disposable personal income] growth in 2003 incorporates likely Congressional approval this summer of a tax cut package." Bush's assertion that forecasters took a tax cut into account is based on the flimsiest of evidence.

Nonetheless, the Preisdent continues to invoke the prestige of the Blue Chip Forecast in pushing for his tax plan. On February 24, Bush stated that "[T]hese economists predicted in the [B]lue [C]hip [F]orecast that the economy would grow at 3.3 percent if the Congress responded to a stimulative package. If it responded." He also alluded to the report in a remark last Thursday: "A lot of the experts are projecting growth at 3.3 percent. Inherent in their projections is that Congress pass a stimulus package, fiscal stimulus package."

While Moore told me he does not object to the President's latest remarks, it is clear that the President is citing the Blue Chip Forecast in a questionable way. Rather than back down when called on it, however, he has continued to repeat his assertion in a slightly less specific way that nonetheless implies to the casual listener that the Blue Chip is predicating its analysis on the passage of a bill similar to his.

Bush's use of the Blue Chip is part of a larger and more troubling trend. His administration has a history of attempting to lend credibility to its economic proposals by falsely citing economic experts. In November 2001, for example, White House spokesman Scott Stenzel told the Washington Times that "[a]lmost every leading economist believes the tax cut was the best way to stimulate growth in the slow economy that the president inherited." Yet such a statement is easily proven false. Many prominent economists opposed the cut, and more than 100, including eight Nobel Prize winners, signed a statement arguing that the Bush tax cut is "is too large, too skewed to the wealthy, and arrives too late to head off a recession."

Nor is this the first time that the Bush administration has falsely cited a report to buttress its policy positions. Last September, Bush claimed that a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iraq was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon" when UN weapons inspectors left the country. Yet as we demonstrated, not only did Bush confuse the timing and meaning of that report, but his spokespeople responded by intentionally obfuscating. They first claimed that Bush was citing a 1991 IAEA report which did not exist, before finally suggesting he was referring to a International Institute for Strategic Studies report that turned out to have been issued days after Bush's remarks.

The Bush administration has established a troubling pattern of citing experts in support of its policies which, on close examination, turn out not to exist or to contradict administration claims.

Correction 3/3: A phrase above implying that UN weapons inspectors were "kicked out" has been changed. For more on why the inspectors left Iraq in 1998, see Brendan Nyhan's post on the subject.

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Related links:
-Making Bush tell the truth (Brendan Nyhan, 11/8/02)
-New tax cut dissembling from the Bush administration (Ben Fritz, 11/13/01)

3/2/2003 05:56:36 PM EST |

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