Washington's Crackhead Economics

My friend Matthew Vadum has a MUST-READ post at Big Government. He (or perhaps more likely his editor) charitably provides the title “Official Washington’s Cracked Accounting.” I think my headline and its accompanying video are more accurate given the insane behavior he describes:

I remember writing an article in early 2004 that illustrates the cognitive dissonance that some in Washington are capable of.

At that time President Bush proposed appropriating $16.9 billion in Section 8 housing voucher subsidies for fiscal 2005, which was higher than the $16.4 billion appropriated in fiscal 2004.

A sane person would look at the two figures and conclude that $16.9 billion was $500 million more than $16.4 billion.

But the leftists at the CBPP argued that after taking into account inflation and other factors, the $16.9 billion would have been a funding cut.

Instead of being honest and saying that the $500 million wasn’t enough of an increase in their opinion, CBPP analysts lied, claiming the increase was a cut.

BTW, I just started Matthew’s new book on ACORN (which is most definitely not at all dead), Subversion Inc. It’s doing the seemingly impossible: lowering my opinion of ACORN and its defenders even more. This is going to be an eye-opener.