But for some reason getting a C- from teacher is far more worrisome than the country
completely falling apart.
Perhaps the most preposterous CBO estimate of late, however, is the one about automatic stabilizers. These would be some kind of rescue policy that would keep going until the economy was back up to full strength — like continuing monthly stimulus checks so long as, say, unemployment was above 6 percent and inflation was below 4 percent. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she wanted to include something like this, but the threat of a big CBO score prevented her from doing so.
Nobody has a clue how long the coronavirus depression is going to last, which will determine how long stabilizers would be activated. So now we have the agency making up a score based on an arbitrary and probably wrong guess about how the economy is going to do, and ignoring the broader economic context at the worst possible moment. The thing about economic stabilizers is that they would almost certainly pay for themselves over the long term by preventing the economy from collapsing. In other words, their cost as a percentage of the economy will be negative, because without them output will be much lower. It's literally free money, and the CBO's cramped ideological perspective is preventing America from picking it up.
Hold on. Gotta filet Ryan's tilapia.
Pelosi's cramped ideological perspective is preventing America from picking it up.
Much better.
