Christina Romer, the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Ezra Klein in an interview this week that a big report issued by her committee showed nothing but good things about White House healthcare reform plans.
What’s notable is the tone. She delivers the news in a tone that, at least in print, sounds like she thinks she is delivering a surprising revelation.
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Nancy-Ann DeParle [head of the White House Office on Health Reform] asked if the CEA could do this. And one of the things that struck me was that she said you know, I actually want to know if it’s true. If we’re going to do this big hard thing, i want to know it’s good for the economy. So that was definitely the spirit under which I took on the exercise and did the analysis. And it actually turned out it was good for the economy! We were actually trying to figure out truth, which I think is always a good thing.
Do we really believe the White House was going to put out a report showing that their healthcare reforms were going to be bad for the economy? And isn’t “trying to figure out the truth” just kind of what’s basically expected?
Romer is one of the administration officials skewered by the Republican Study Committee in a press release for having no experience in the business world.
“CEO-in-Chief Surrounded by Black Hole of Business Experience,” says the RSC release.
The RSC, a group of conservative House Republicans, lists the work experience for Obama and several of his top economic advisers, ending each time with this line: “Private sector business experience: None.”
But they end with Brian Deese, a member of the president’s auto task force. The New York Times profile this week of the 31-year old is raising eyebrows from skeptics and critics who view Deese as symbolic of the inexperience they think is characteristic of the administration.
Under Deese’s name, the RSC says this: “Private Sector Business Experience: Once slept in a GM plant parking lot on a road trip from Chicago to Washington, DC.”
— Jon Ward, White House reporter, The Washington Times
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