Tuesday, January 27, 2009

About that CBO report...

On the bus-ride home last night I was listening to a news podcast (don't remember which one at the moment, but it might've been the Anderson Cooper video podcast) and someone mentioned that a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report had been released last Tuesday slamming the proposed stimulus bill as ineffective, but that it didn't get any coverage because it came out on inauguration day. This story has now been widely carried by all of the major networks and has become a right-wing talking point, the repeated point being that the CBO has supposedly criticized the stimulus plan on terms of not enacting spending soon enough. Well, guess what. There was no such report. These accusations were apparently based on a leaked portion of a simulation that had been done on one portion of an earlier stimulus draft. The full CBO report has now been released and reports that two-thirds of the proposed spending will happen in the next 18 months. What are the chances that the major networks will issue a correction? Any chance of some honestly among Republicans?

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