Still looking for a few good economists

November 28, 2005

If you’re an experienced Republican economist willing to toe the party line on tax cuts, deficits, rewriting the tax code, and trade, pack your bags. You’re needed in Washington.

The chairmanship of the Council of Economic Advisers will soon be vacant, and two spots on the Federal Reserve Board that were recently filled by academic economists already are. There is no assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy, and the director’s chair at the Congressional Budget Office, currently occupied by Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, will soon be empty, too.

The White House and Congress need as many as five academic economists of high caliber, and it’s not obvious where they will come from. The Republican Party may be facing something of a shallow bench.

This isn’t an accident. Why would a qualified economist want to work for a White House that marginalizes and ignores real economic advice? If someone works in academia, he or she risks giving up a tenured position to work for a White House that doesn’t take fiscal sanity seriously. If he or she works in the private sector, they risk giving up a lucrative salary for a post that could weaken their reputation. The result is an administration that can’t hire real economists, because no one even wants to return the White House’s phone calls.

This also isn’t an entirely new problem for the Bush gang. After the election, Treasury Secretary John Snow was as good as gone. One senior administration official said Snow can stay as long as he wants, “provided it is not very long.” Then, all of a sudden, Snow was invited to stay on. Why? Because no one else wanted the job.

Who can blame them? Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, was shown the door when he opposed a second round of tax cuts for the wealthy in light of swelling deficits. Glenn Hubbard, who served as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, was made to look pretty foolish when the Bush gang had him promote policies he’d argued against as a scholar.

And now the White House can’t find an economist who wants to move to DC to work for Bush. I wonder if the Bush gang even understands why they’re having trouble.

Do they care–that seems to be a more relevant issue.

  • Do they care

    Well, they have to care a little — these are posts that need people. I suspect the plan is to hire the economists then ignore them.

  • It’s an interesting point to note that the recovery from 9/11 and the Bush recession has been strong enough that most states are now running a surplus from their tax revenues.

    But not, for some reason, the Federal Government!

    Could it be that revenue shortfalls are the result of systemic inadajencies of the tax code, and can not be made up by any resonable expectations of growth?

    So why would an economist want to come to work for the Bushies?

  • I think the administration is having a hard time filing positions all over. First, this is a lame (and getting lamer) duck president. Second, who would want to join an administration so f**ked-up.

  • Brownie might be interested. Apparently he did a heckuva job in his last position, and he’s at least equally well qualified for any of these positions..

  • Damn! You beat me to the Brownie comment. Seriously, the Bush Administration appoints people to posts where they whave absolutely no experience or expertise. The fact the posts call for responsible, credible appointees has never stopped Bush from appointing unqualified, incompetent dunderheads in the past.

    Or … could it be that many professionals are viewing a Bush appointment not as a pay cut but as an embarassing blemish on their resumes?

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