The Bush Administration’s Lie of the Day

Speaking of calling the Bush administration to account for its distortions of the truth, Joe Conason (of Salon and New York Observer fame) is wisely alerting his readers to an astonishing example of the administration lying — again — about broad support for its fiscal policies.

You may have heard about 450 economists — including 10 Nobel Laureates — opposing Bush’s latest “economic plan.” While the White House proposal should be opposed for being a bizarre joke anyway, the opposition from these scholars counts for something.

It was with this in mind that the White House announced on Thursday that, despite what we may have heard, the “nation’s top economists forecast substantial economic growth” if Congress approved his latest tax giveaway to the wealthy. The White House, and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in particular, touted a new survey produced by 53 respondents to a newsletter known as Blue Chip Economic Forecast, which the administration said forecasted the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if the president’s tax cut proposal becomes law.

James Toedtman, the chief economic correspondent for Newsday, smelled a rat. In fact, Toedtman discovered one major flaw in the Blue Chip Economic Forecast report the White House was so excited about: it doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know what he was citing,” Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast, told Newsday. “I was a little upset. It sounded like the Blue Chip Economic Forecast had endorsed the president’s plan. That’s simply not the case.” (Moore acknowledged that he has already complained to the White House about this discrepancy.)

As Conason explains, “the economists had predicted a potential 3.3 percent growth rate. They had also predicted that ‘some version’ of a Bush stimulus plan would pass. But they had made no connection between the two — and in fact, most of the nation’s ‘top economists’ don’t believe there is one. It’s hard to say which would be worse: whether Bush doesn’t understand the flaw in his phony syllogism, or if he just assumed that nobody else would.”

Kudos to Toedtman for the scoop. By the way, for the burgeoning journalists in the audience, any guesses on how Toedtman uncovered the latest White House falsehood? Did he use special investigative journalistic techniques? Did he have a secret, high-ranking White House insider source? Did he use a team of crack researchers? No. He heard the White House’s claims and simply called the editor of the Blue Chip Economic Forecast to see if what the administration was saying was true. Like far too many of this adminsitration’s claims, it wasn’t.