Newt Gingrich and the Treachery of the Budget Wonks

By Kevin Drum
Mother Jones
Nov. 21, 2011 8:24 PM PST

It's hard to keep up with conservatives. One day the center of liberal treachery is the NAFTA superhighway, the next it's the Tides Foundation. Fast forward a few months and Agenda 21 is ruining the country, then a few weeks later it's the Fed. Trying to keep score at home is exhausting. Luckily, we have Newt Gingrich to clue us into the next conservative jihad:

The Congressional Budget Office is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation, and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.

The Congressional Budget Office! That's the shadowy cabal behind the decline of America! It's been the budget wonks all along!

So what's their sin? Beats me. At a guess, though, it's their general unwillingness to apply "dynamic scoring" to the fantasy-based budget plans concocted by Republicans. You know, the ones where a gazillion dollar tax cut supercharges the economy and generates ponies and surpluses as far as the eye can see. But the stodgy old CBO won't hear of it. They'll account for deadweight losses and other well-grounded economic effects that offset revenue losses from tax cuts a little bit, but that's all. No magic and no free lunches.

So Newt, the great conservative philosopher king, is mad at them. But there's not really any point in pretending to take this seriously. It just deserves a solid dose of mockery. So that's what it gets from Dan Drezner's Twitter feed. Enjoy.

(Check out the Twitter feeds, here.)