'Seriously' Embarrassing (Paul Ryan's proposal and "unicorn sightings") [View All]

[ProSense]

Josh Marshall: 'Seriously' Embarrassing

On Monday and Tuesday, politicians and commentators were practically falling over themselves to praise Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget proposal as "serious" and "courageous", even in cases where they disagreed with it on policy terms. Whatever you think of his policy positions, the argument went, give the man credit for telling it like it is and grappling with the hard numbers. But after a day or two of looking at the numbers, it turns out a lot of his assumptions and predictions are completely preposterous. Not just in the sense of the normal padding and optimistic assumptions that most budgets include. But really preposterous. Like 2.8% unemployment? Really curious what all the Ryan-o-philes are going to say about these numbers. Check out our report. Really must read.

TPM report: Paul Ryan's Absurdly Optimistic Budget Projections Draw Widespread Ridicule

2.8% unemployment? $150 billon a year in new economic growth? Tax revenues that rise with tax cuts?

All this can be yours -- and more! -- even while cutting trillions of dollars from the federal government and lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations, according to a giddy estimate of the Republican budget by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Even as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proudly touted his "fact-based budget" and decried Democrats' "budget gimmicks" yesterday, he prominently cited the think tank's absurdly rosy numbers, drawing widespread mockery from economists, budget experts, and health care wonks. Even the developer of the model that Heritage used to crunch the numbers can't figure out how Heritage reached its conclusions.

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As Paul Krugman put it, Heritage's take "depends an awful lot on unicorn sightings -- a belief in the impossible."

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"CBO is what they use on the budget side -- as a matter of procedure, any numbers from the Heritage Foundation or anybody else are essentially worthless," Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, said in an interview. "You can assert whatever you want to assert, but you can always find some half-baked tax think tank that will make up any number you feel like."

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research..."I think they just misprogrammed it," he told TPM. "Note that the unemployment rate falls by 2.1 percentage points relative to the baseline in 2012 even though they only created an extra 900,000 jobs. That doesn't make any sense."

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