Michael Steele has a new op-ed posted at USA Today, promoting the GOP’s continuing assertion that their stimulus plan has numbers to back up its superiority over the Dem bill:
Republicans have a better solution: an economic recovery plan that lets families and small businesses keep more of what they earn. By our analysis, the Republican plan would create 6.2 million jobs, twice the number created under the Democrats’ plan, at half the cost.
Again, it needs to be asked where they got this from. As we’ve previously reported, this came from altering the base numbers in an economic analysis that Christina Romer, who is now serving as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a year ago — well before the current crisis of a deflationary economy had come into play.
There are two problems here. First, that paper didn’t actually examine tax cuts, but instead looked at the negative effects of tax increases under normal circumstances. The Republicans’ predictions about tax cuts come from flipping the numbers around and assuming the mirror-image effects.
And furthermore, they’ve totally ignored the fact that we are in an abnormal scenario right now, with different fundamental underlying assumptions.
But hey, never let that stop you from some good political spin.
Late Update: Hmm, Eric Cantor is doing it, too.
