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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Congress looks to the CBO for economic expertise. Is that a mistake? (with Mark Paul)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Congressional Budget Office, the institution that furnishes cost-benefit analyses for federal legislation under consideration by Congress, has a really hard job. But some of the assumptions they rely on to predict economic consequences are just plain weird. Economist Mark Paul leads us through the strangest practices at the CBO, including their (untrue) claim that public investment is only half as productive as private investment and the complete lack of peer-reviewing of reports that can signal the death knell for a bill. Mark Paul is an Economist at the New College of Florida and a Fellow at the Berggruen Institute. Twitter: @MarkVinPaul Further reading: The Pitch: Economic Update for February 10th, 2022 https://civicventures.substack.com/p/bidens-big-union-push Mark’s tweet about the CBO: https://twitter.com/MarkVinPaul/status/1491165138288005121 The Macroeconomic and Budgetary Effects of Federal Investment https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51628 CBO issues score on how much Build Back Better would cost if programs were permanent https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/politics/build-back-better-cbo-score/index.html Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0

We have allowed ourselves to become prisoners of this nonsense.

0:05.6

Groups like CBO and Ken Warren simply assume that public spending is bad.

0:10.2

And as a result, whenever a member of Congress proposes public spending,

0:13.6

they show that it's bad for the economy.

0:15.3

Well, if you simply assume it's bad,

0:16.9

it's no wonder that the results show it's bad.

0:19.2

To persuade Americans that investing in themselves is bad for the economy

0:24.8

and the rest of it, it is just a freaking outrage.

0:30.7

From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle,

0:35.8

this is Pitchfork Economics, with Nick Hanauer,

0:39.0

the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

0:49.3

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

0:52.5

I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.

1:00.8

So Nick, we're recording this podcast the morning

1:04.6

after President Biden's first state of the union speech.

1:08.3

I don't know if you got a chance to listen to it,

1:10.2

but there was a lot of stuff in there.

1:12.3

It was a very Pitchfork economics kind of speech,

1:16.8

a very civic venture speech.

1:18.8

He mentioned building the economy from the bottom up in the middle out twice.

1:24.4

I know.

1:24.9

Twice, he called for a $15 minimum wage.

...

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