Brendan Nyhan

I’m quoted in a Harvard Crimson story on Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economics professor and former Bush administration economist:

N. Gregory Mankiw is not unfamiliar with the demands that come with being one of the foremost economists in the country.

After all, the Beren Professor of Economics survived a stint in the very public domain of Washington politics, serving as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2003 to 2005. But now, he’s facing a new and perhaps even more public challenge—the wrath of online bloggers.

Several professors and economists have called on Mankiw to explain what they see as his changing views on tax cuts from before he began advising President George W. Bush to when he served as Bush’s top economic advisor.

According to an online blog post by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, Mankiw had previously criticized certain supply-side arguments—namely, that lowering tax rates could actually generate more tax revenue—and then reversed his opinion while working in Washington.

But Mankiw said that he never made such a policy switch.

“[Bernstein] made a claim that I’d been inconsistent about the tax cuts and I don’t think I had been,” Mankiw said. “Being opposed to a tax cut as a policy and being critical of an argument for tax cuts are two different things.”

Mankiw clarified on his own online blog that he opposed only the supply-side argument for tax cuts but that he thought the 2003 Bush tax cuts were justified for other reasons—though he himself was not actually an advisor to the President when those tax cuts were implemented.

But Brendan J. Nyhan, a political science graduate student at Duke University and frequent blogger, points out that while Mankiw said he was “skeptical” of the claim that tax cuts could pay for themselves during his Senate confirmation hearing, Mankiw also denied that the administration had used “self-financing” arguments.

Nyhan then lists on his blog specific quotes from then-Press Secretary Ari Fleis[c]her, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President Bush, all of whom said in the early months of 2003 that the tax cuts would lead to more tax revenue.

“Mankiw failed to get the Bush administration to say things that were accurate about the effects of tax cuts on revenue and other economic issues,” Nyhan said. “That Mankiw is unwilling to acknowledge that the Bush administration made these claims is exemplary of White House experts who are unwilling to publicly contradict their bosses in the administration.”

J. Bradford Delong ’82, a prominent economist at UC Berkeley, also weighed in on the debate on his blog, questioning whether it is “worth the sacrifice of the economics profession’s outside credibility and the further confusion of the public that is entailed when good economists defend bad policies on the outside that they are working to change on the inside.”

No one outside the administration may ever know whether Mankiw privately advised Bush that the tax cuts would not be self-financing. But Mankiw announced in late 2006 that he had signed on as an advisor to the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and the Republican candidate seems to be employing these very same supply-side arguments.

“If you lower taxes enough, you create more growth,” Romney said in a video excerpt on his Web site from a closed-door presentation he made to the Club for Growth, a political organization that favors low taxes, in March 2007.

“And if you create growth, you get more jobs,” Romney continued. “You get more jobs, more people are paying taxes. You get more taxes paid, the government has more money by charging lower tax rates.”

It would appear that this is the very same argument for taxes that Mankiw has said he opposed.

Nyhan said that economists with ties to politicians need to be more honest with the public regarding their actual views, whether or not they clash with the prominent figures they’re advising.

“We need to drive this idea out of the mainstream, because it is not accurate,” Nyhan said.

Here are the links that are referenced in the piece:
–My Spinsanity piece on Mankiw’s confirmation hearing claim
–The full timeline of Bush administration officials suggesting that tax cuts increase revenue
–The Romney video in which he states that tax cuts increase revenue (click on “On the Issues” then select “On Fighting for Lower Taxes”)

It’s especially sad to see that Romney — who Mankiw advises — is making these claims. After John McCain started saying that tax cuts increase revenue, Mankiw badmouthed McCain on his blog:

Senator McCain tells the National Review:

Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues.

The interviewer, however, did not ask the natural follow-up questions:

1. If you think the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts increased revenue, why did you vote against them?

2. If you think tax cuts increase revenue, why advocate spending restraint? Can’t we pay for new spending programs with more tax cuts?

I doubt that, in fact, Senator McCain believes we are on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. But unfortunately, fealty to the most extreme supply-side views is de rigeur in some segments of the Republican party.

It’s a strange point for Mankiw to make. He has failed to acknowledge publicly that the Bush administration makes the same exact claims. In addition, I noted the apparent implication that Romney, whose campaign Mankiw had recently joined as an adviser, would not make similar claims. Judging by the quote above, however, the former Massachusetts governor is following McCain and Rudy Giuliani down the rabbit hole. Will Mankiw passively endorse this rhetoric again?

Why does the AP suggest that Al Qaeda’s rebuilt operational capacity “could bolster the president’s hand at a moment when support on Capitol Hill for the war is eroding and the administration is struggling to defend its decision for a military buildup in Iraq”? The report is titled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West” and seems to concern Al Qaeda the terrorist group, not the insurgent faction known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. And given that Bush’s approval is at 27.7% and 62% of Americans now think that the invasion was a mistake, I’m not sure anything is going to strengthen the President’s hand.

(PS I’m in DC doing interviews for my dissertation research before heading up to Massachusetts on Friday, so I may not get a chance to post again before the weekend. In the meantime, don’t miss the lively debates in comments about “Sicko” and increasing the gas tax.)

After a mild fact-checking piece on “Sicko” by CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Michael Moore went on a long rant yesterday in which he claimed that “everything I said in ‘Fahrenheit [9/11]’ was true” (transcript, video):

And for me to come on here and have to listen to that kind of crap. I mean, seriously, I haven’t been on your show now for three years. The last time I was on, you ran a similar piece about “Fahrenheit 9/11” saying this can’t be true what he’s saying about the war, how it’s going to be a quagmire, the weapons of mass destruction.

You know, and — why don’t you start off actually with my first appearance back here on your show in three years and maybe apologize to me for saying that three years ago, because it turned out everything I said in “Fahrenheit” was true. Everything has come to happen.

Everything I said. I mean, I was — I took you in that film to Walter Reed Hospital and it took three years before you or any of the rest of the mainstream media would go to Walter Reed Hospital and see what was happening to our troops. So for me to have to sit here and listen again to more crap about socialized medicine or how the Canadians have it worse than us and all this, all the statistics show that we have far worse healthcare than these other industrialized countries.

However, as we wrote on Spinsanity in 2004, “Fahrenheit 9/11” is actually “filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up.” Judging by initial reports, “Sicko” is somewhat less problematic (I haven’t seen it yet), but you still should not trust anything that man says.

(Note: Moore disputes Gupta’s piece on his website. I can’t arbitrate without having seen the film, but the debate seems to be the result of conflicting sources of information and slight variations in statistics.)

Update 7/10 10:09 PM: Dean Baker, the co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Research and an American Prospect blogger, says Moore was right about current levels of health care spending in the US.

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board expresses the common concern that a gas tax increase would not be offset by corresponding tax cuts, but would instead be consumed by increased government spending:

Speaking for ourselves, we don’t favor a carbon tax. In theory, such a tax might make sense if it were offset by lower taxes on income tax rates and capital investment–which would be a net plus for economic growth. However, there’s not a chance in melting Greenland that the current Congress would offset any new carbon taxes; it would merely pocket the extra revenue to permanently increase the government’s share of GDP.

The solution, I’ve argued, is to create a Federal Reserve for gas taxes:

[T]he government’s commitment to ensuring that people get a fair deal from a gas tax is not credible. Politicians have every incentive to take the extra revenues and put them toward more pork while taking back the accompanying tax cut over time. So why not have an independent Federal Reserve-type board of economists that’s responsible for adjusting the tax cut to maximize fuel efficiency without creating economic dislocation? The board could also be responsible for creating a yearly tax rebate that could be administered separately from the normal income tax system. That way people would see the proceeds from the gas tax coming back to them in a transparent way.

Isn’t this the only way to make the politics of a $1/gallon gas tax hike feasible?

New York Times reporter Robert Pear does solid work on the health care beat, but this passage betrays his sympathies in the debate over expanding government financing of health care insurance for children:

The fight over a popular health insurance program for children is intensifying, with President Bush now leading efforts to block a major expansion of the program, which is a top priority for Congressional Democrats.

The seemingly uncontroversial goal of insuring more children has become the focus of an ideological battle between the White House and Congress.

Here, “[s]eemingly uncontroversial” is code for “only unreasonable ideologues oppose it.” I don’t agree with the White House position on this, but it’s not outside the boundaries of mainstream political debate:

White House objections to the Democratic plan are “philosophical and ideological,” said Allan B. Hubbard, assistant to the president for economic policy. In an interview, he said the Democrats’ proposal would move the nation toward “a single-payer health care system with rationing and price controls.”

The key is the distinction between means and ends. The goal of covering all children is almost universally shared, but liberals and conservatives disagree over whether the government should finance health insurance for uninsured children, particularly for those over the poverty line. Instead of acknowledging this philosophical disagreement over means, Pear’s lede suggests that the White House opposes the goal of more coverage for children.

I don’t agree with simplistic media bias claims, but this is an example of how liberal bias does creep in to reporting — reporters often blur the distinction between opposition to government provision of services or funding and opposition to the goals of the programs.

I missed the stunning graphic that accompanied the Washington Post’s investigation John Edwards’s haircuts (via Bob Somerby):

It’s everything that’s wrong with political journalism in one handy clip ‘n’ save graphic. Keep it in your wallet! Show your friends!

Today’s man-bites-dog headline: ABC News is reporting that Ron Paul has more cash on hand than John McCain. In related news, the Intrade prediction market puts McCain’s probability of winning at 5%, barely higher than Paul, who is (shockingly) at 2.4%.

Stupid newspaper website tricks:

Yes, the News & Observer (a newspaper based in Raleigh, NC) is trying to encourage readership of newsobserver.com by encouraging visitors to search the site for virtual dog biscuits. Weep for the future of the news media…

PS Browzer is a nice complement to my collection of wacky government animal mascots for kids, though (see here, here, and here).

Like several commenters on my original Scooter Libby post, Josh Marshall is assuming the existence of an underlying crime that was protected by Libby’s perjury:

Setting aside whether Scooter Libby should spend 0 days in jail for what most people spend from 1 to 3 years in jail, the key here is that it’s inappropriate for the president to pardon or commute a sentence in a case in which he (i.e., the president) is a party to the same underlying crime. Because it amounts to obstruction of justice.

Note how quickly the tables have turned here. People (like Marshall) who bemoaned the guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude of Republicans during the Clinton years have now decided — based on no hard evidence — (a) there was an underlying crime and (b) that President Bush “is a party to” it. To believe this to be true, you have to believe that Richard Armitage innocently leaked Valerie Plame’s status to Robert Novak before other Bush officials could unleash a plot that demonstrably violated the relevant statute. In addition, you have to believe that Libby’s testimony would reveal this plot. While it’s possible that all of this happened, assuming that it did is completely unreasonable.

Matthew Yglesias is more circumspect about the existence of an underlying crime, but still frames the issue in a “when did you stop beating your wife?” style:

Most of Libby’s defenders — George W. Bush, David Brooks, etc. — don’t seem to be denying that Libby committed a crime by lying under oath to investigators. They want us to say that, rather, he deserves to be treated very leniently because there was no big deal here. The alleged absence of an underlying crime is key to that theory. The converse theory is that there was an underlying crime and the crime can’t be proven because Libby lied to investigators.

If that theory is wrong — if there really was no crime — then it seems we ought to get some kind of explanation from Libby as to why he lied. People sometimes do have reasons to lie to investigators other than a desire to cover up criminal activity (hiding non-criminal activity that’s embarrassing is the obvious one) but if Libby wants mercy he should offer up a plausible score on this account. But Libby hasn’t offered any such story… Maybe there was no crime here; but if there wasn’t, then what was Libby doing? He’s not even trying to convince us that he had some other reason to lie.

Libby is by all accounts a loyal servant. Couldn’t he just be protecting his superiors from exposure of embarrassing but non-criminal conduct? In the end, we have no idea what happened. There is no proof of a criminal conspiracy. Asserting or speculating that one took place is irresponsible.

Update 7/6 10:37 AM: Yglesias concedes a great deal of ground in a response, changing the question from “Doesn’t the absence of an explanation for Libby’s conduct suggest the existence of an underlying crime?” (the subject of his previous post) to “Was Bush’s decision to commute Libby’s sentence an abuse of power?”:

Brendan Nyhan criticizes liberals for simply assuming the existence of an underlying crime in the Scooter Libby case and sweeps my post here into that rubric, wondering of Libby “Couldn’t he just be protecting his superiors from exposure of embarrassing but non-criminal conduct?” He certainly could. But let’s assume that’s true. Is “I broke the law to help my boss cover-up embarrassing but non-criminal conduct” a reasonable case for lenience? No. Is “he broke the law to help me cover-up embarrassing by non-criminal conduct” a reasonable case for granting someone clemency? Also no.

The bottom line is that on one theory — Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their lawbreaking, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing lawbreaking — Libby deserves to go to jail and Bush has seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby. On Nyhan’s alternative theory — Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct — Libby also deserves to go to [jail] and Bush has also seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby.

This — that the President of the United States is abusing his power in a serious way — is a substantially more important issue than the question of whether Josh Marshall should be slightly more circumspect in his characterization of the serious abuses of power.

Actually, unsubstantiated assertions that the president of the United States participated in a criminal conspiracy are a pretty important issue. (Matt’s liberal friends were pretty worked up about this issue a few years ago — and rightly so.) In any case, despite my misgivings about the Libby case, I ultimately agree with Yglesias that Bush’s decision was an abuse of power and I support the proposal he highlighted that would amend the Constitution to ban pardons and commutations for “executive-branch employees convicted of crimes carried out in the course of their professional duties.”

Update 7/6 12:41 PM: Yglesias added the following update to his post:

UPDATE: See Brendan’s update. Bottom-line, I think it’s rock solid that Bush abused his power, and until someone can offer a plausible account of what kind of non-criminal conduct Libby is helping to cover-up, I’m not going to be too upset if people assume that what’s being covered-up was, in fact, a crime. The fact that Bush is actively and openly participating in the cover-up (and there’s no serious doubt that something is being covered-up) naturally whets one’s suspicions. Bush and Cheney are, however, clearly entitled to a legal presumption of innocence.

I’ll just add that many conservatives had many such “suspicions” about the reasons for alleged coverups of, say, Whitewater that turned out to be unfounded.

Update 7/7 10:32 AM: Conversely, as Media Matters points out, Robert Novak is incorrect to assert definitively that “there was no underlying crime.” As a result of Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice, we don’t know that for sure either.

Josh Marshall has posted a Fox News clip in which National Review Online’s Jerry Bowyer tells Neil Cavuto that the United Kingdom’s state-run health care system has made them vulnerable to terrorist infiltration:

In a followup post, he asks for details about Bowyer:

Can anyone tell me more about Jerry Bowyer from National Review Online? He’s the guy in the video below who went on Fox today and chatted with Neil Cavuto about how having a single payer health care system will make us more vulnerable to terrorism. Where do they find these guys? Did I just not watch Fox closely enough in the past?

Is he on these shows a lot? Has anyone heard this argument before?

Since I’ve written quite a bit about Bowyer over the last few years, here are some excerpts from my posts on him, which show that he is, um, analytically challenged:

Supply-side nonsense from Jerry Bowyer (5/15/07)

In his latest effort, Bowyer once again claims that the Laffer curve has been vindicated and that tax cuts increase revenue, a claim that even Bush economists disavow…

…Note what’s missing from Bowyer’s account: the 2001 tax cut. Like the Treasury Department and the Wall Street Journal, Bowyer is cheating by focusing only on the period after the second Bush tax cut. That’s the great thing about cutting taxes repeatedly: when the economy picks up, you just point to the most recent tax cut and take credit.

More fundamentally, if tax cuts increased revenue, why is per capita revenue growth near zero since 2001 after adjusting for inflation? Bowyer’s cherry-picked data tell us nothing.

Jerry Bowyer’s misleading media bias claim (4/25/07)

…In a column today on NRO Financial, Jerry Bowyer, a conservative columnist/radio host/investment adviser, blames media bias for the lack of coverage of current levels of black unemployment under President Bush…

…The problem is that Bowyer is comparing apples to oranges — he’s juxtaposing 8.3 percent unemployment in a single month under President Bush with the “average rate achieved during President Bill Clinton’s second term.” In fact, black unemployment dropped all the way to 7.3 percent during Clinton’s second term, and the average of Clinton’s second term was lower than the average under Bush.

Bad economics at National Review (6/21/06)

…To support these meaningless data — what does the combined net worth of all US households and nonprofits mean? — Bowyer offers what might be the most useless bar chart ever created:

Bowyer’s chart has three primary flaws: (1) it combines Bill Gates with homeless people and everyone in between, giving us no sense of how middle class or poor families are doing; (2) it lumps together nonprofits and households; (3) it gives us no sense of how household net worth has changed over time. The first flaw is analogous to President Bush using “average” tax cut statistics that are skewed upward by high-income individuals…

What is Jerry Bowyer talking about? (7/12/05)

…He writes that “states that went for George W. Bush in the last election are considerably poorer than the ones that went for Kerry. The notion that the GOP is the party of the rich simply doesn’t match the economic reality.”

But you can’t make reliable inferences about individual behavior from aggregate data; this is what is known as the “ecological fallacy”. And the obvious counterpoint to Bowyer is that the bivariate correlations between party and income are pretty clear…