Bush Playing Fast and Loose (as Always) with Economic Figures

Think Progress backs up my comments of yesterday when Bush spoke at his two-question press conference - with Karl Rove smirking in the background:

President Bush used recent news about the budget deficit – this year’s deficit will be “$333 billion…almost $100 billion less than earlier estimates” – to “[vindicate] his stewardship of the economy and budget.” The President then took advantage of the opportunity and stated, “It’s a sign that our tax relief plan, our pro-growth policies, are working.”

Despite the President’s self-congratulatory words, economic analysts have reached a totally different conclusion. While maintaining that “the trimming of the deficit is certainly a positive development,” they repeated the fact that “consensus among economists and financial analysts, and the empirical data, are strongly consistent with the basic, common-sense notion that tax cuts do not pay for themselves.” And, after taking a big picture on the economy, the experts found that “the reduction in this year’s deficit from a very large one to a large one has little bearing on the nation’s shaky long-term fiscal foundation.”