Cato @ Liberty » Economists across the Political Spectrum. Not.

Economists across the Political Spectrum. Not.

Posted By David Boaz On February 2, 2009 @ 8:49 am In Tax and Budget Policy | Comments Disabled

Robert Reich joins President Obama ^[1] and Vice President Biden ^[2] in claiming ^[3] that “economic advisers across the political spectrum support Obama’s plan.”

Now, President Obama and Vice President Biden probably aren’t reading whole newspapers ^[4] these days, and like their predecessors they don’t talk much to people who don’t agree with them. So they may have genuinely believed that “Economists from across the political spectrum agree” on the need for a massive stimulus program.

But Reich doesn’t have that excuse. He’s a professor at Berkeley. He has full access to newspapers, email, the Internet, and the help of grad students — and so he cannot be unaware that lots of leading economists oppose the Obama plan and similar massive spending programs. But then, as I’ve noted before ^[5], he’s often ^[6] been at wide variance ^[7] with the facts ^[8]. This time, knowing that his claim might be doubted, he cited the one conservative economist who has famously endorsed a large stimulus — Martin Feldstein of Harvard — but didn’t quite acknowledge that Feldstein has called Obama’s plan “An $800 Billion Mistake ^[9].”

Article printed from Cato @ Liberty: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org

URL to article: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/economists-across-the-political-spectrum-not/

URLs in this post:

[1] President Obama: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090103/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama

[2] Vice President Biden: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/28/economists-against-the-stimulus/

[3] claiming: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013003116.html

[4] newspapers: http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf

[5] as I’ve noted before: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/06/06/robert-reich-wrong-again/

[6] often: http://www.slate.com/?id=2488

[7] at wide variance: http://www.slate.com/?id=2447

[8] facts: http://reason.com/9710/col.hazlett.shtml

[9] “An $800 Billion Mistake: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR2009012802938.html

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