First, there aren't two articles. Just one written by Novak and excerpted by Newsmax.
I did read the Novak article in its entirety. He says that though original gdp estimates were too high, and though there could be political motive to cook the books, there is no evidence that that happened. And he concludes (also left out by newsmax):
The Bureau of Economic Analysis may well be free of partisan tilt, but its incompetence can cast a long political shadow.
More from Novak:
''The gap is a bit larger than usual, but not really out of line,'' Brent Moulton, associate director at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told me. Moulton, who was in charge of both the old figures and the new revision, said the problem was the two-year delay in obtaining corporate tax returns (reflecting changes in telecommunications and business services).
See, the economy took a sharp and unexpected downturn which messed up some of these types of projections. For most of the Clinton years the estimates were revised upwards. So far Bush has presided of nothing but downward revisions.
And as i said before one could easily argue that Bush is cooking these new downward revisions to make the Clinton years look worse and therefore make Bush look better by an easier comparison.
Do these obvious political motives mean the new numbers are cooked to help Bush? Not without evidence they don't. (See how that works?)
On the other hand Bush's budgets have been willfully dishonest, and unlike Clinton he has consistently and purposely overestimated revenue while underestimating deficits and the real costs of his proposed expenditures. But that's a different subject.
Steve |
