CONGRESSIONAL
RESEARCH SERVICE MEETS REPUBLICAN MEMORY HOLE
By
William Boardman Email address removed
Late
on a Friday in September, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a respected agency within the Library of Congress, released
a report
concluding, in effect, that there is no
objective support for core Republican economic policies. Reducing the top tax rates, the report
concludes, has no correlation with the nation's economic growth, but does
contribute to the growing gap between the wealthy and the rest of Americans.
Some
media
reports
followed,
and then two weeks later the CRS report quietly went away from the CRS website without
having had much impact, even though it was a non-partisan debunking of Mitt
Romney's core economic argument. More
than a month later, the New York Times
published a story asking, in effect, "Now what was that all about?" One answer
to the mystery turned out to be that Republican pressure on the CRS over the
style and content
of the report
had effectively sent it down the collective memory hole.
Now
the Congressional Budget Office
has reached essentially the same conclusions,
in a report
issued November 8. So far, this
report is still standing, but Republican intensity
in defense
of tax cuts for the wealthy is growing as their December 31 expiration date
approaches.
Political Pressure Produces Political
Silence
In
late September, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the CRS had quietly
caved in to political pressure. Rather than address critical questions,
the CRS decided simply not to defend its work, despite its longstanding reputation
for accuracy and non-partisanship in its reports
going back decades. CRS officially
withdrew the report, despite the objection of its economics division, while the
report's author was on vacation. Democrats and others
have since re-posted it unofficially but unchanged.
No
previous Congressional Research Service report in living memory has ever been
withdrawn before, according to the New York Times.
Not that the Times made a big deal
about any of this. The story ran
on Friday, November 2, on page B1 of the second section with the bland
headline: "Tax Report Withdrawn At Request of G.O.P." (CRS refused to answer a reporter's inquiry, saying it only
answers questions from Congress.)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).