Foxfyre wrote:
What would be the Cato Institute's motive for chiding the Congressional Budget Office for faulty projections? Or were they just making the point the the CBO projections must be considered educated guesses at best? At the time the CBO was making those projections, there was no Contract with America or Republican revolution that was a factor in the reduced deficits and ultimate balanced budget. (Sometimes I think we should keep the GOP majority in Congress but elect Democrat presidents just for that reason. )
A) the Republicans took over the House and Senate in January of 1995. As you can see, the deficit started plunging in 1993, after many years of fairly steadily going up, up, up. So while the Republicans do indeed deserve credit for continuing to reduce the deficit and moving it into surplus, the important corner was turned starting with Clinton and the Democrats in 1993 and 1994.
I'm not trying to take away credit for what the Republicans did-they do deserve credit-but so do Clinton and the Democrats in 1993 and 1994 for making that vital, dramatic sharp turn.
B) The motivation of Cato Institute in making this statement?
Now I remember the context. The Cato Institute report was not written in the late 1990's it wa written after Bush took office. The issue at hand was the Bush budget, and the deficits it was going to engender. The Congressional Budget Office had released projections that contradicted the deficit projections of the people behind the Bush budget, and the Cato Institute report was supporting the Bush people's projections as opposed to the CBO's.
Hence, the reference to how far off the CBO's projections were in 1991 or 1992-without mentioning that nobody could have seenthe dramatic change of direction that would happen in 1993 as regards deficits. Based on the way things were going in 1991 and 1992, the deficits were certainly headed into sky-high territory, as I am sure you will agree.
I might point out that the CBO projections made in 1991 or 1992 were for years in the future-not for 1991 or 1992. In other words, the CBO was making sky-high projections for what the deficits would be in 1998 or so based on how the deficit was going in the late 80's and early 90's.
Those projections never came true, of course, because Clinton came in and abruptly reversed the direction the deficit was going-later on, with the help of the Republicans.
In the interests of fairness, I will try to dig up the report, or at least the part of it in question, and post it here. I first saw it a few months ago, so it still ought to be there-it was not exactly new when I read if first. That way, you and everyone on this thread can judge for yourself the quality of the Cato Institute analysis on this issue. I found it appalling.
What exactly were you trying to explain?
