What do you call a $100 billion mistake? Inexcusable? Grotesque? If you are a Washington bureaucrat, you call it a "technical re-estimate." That was the modest verbiage employed by the Office of Management and Budget last week when, during its mid-year review, the agency acknowledged that estimates of tax revenues for the next five years were $130 billion too high. The result: even higher budget deficits.
Two days later, OMB Director Richard Darman explained to the Senate Budget Committee that the problem was a Treasury Department accounting blunder. "As far as we understand, we made a mistake," he said. "There it...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
