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