White House Opts Out Of Providing Economic Forecast In A Move That Breaks Decades Of Precedent
Officials said the state of the economy is too fluid and volatile at the moment to accurately give a forecast. But critics note that President Donald Trump -- who has tied his re-election campaign to the health of the economy -- is in an election year.
Budget experts said they were not aware of any previous White House opting against providing forecasts in this 鈥渕id-session review鈥 document in any other year since at least the 1970s. Two White House officials confirmed the decision had been made not to include the economic projections as part of the mid-session release. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the novel coronavirus is causing extreme volatility in the U.S. economy, making it difficult to model economic trends. (Stein and Dawsey, 5/28)
The White House will not release an updated round of economic projections this summer, breaking from precedent as the U.S. faces its deepest downturn since the Great Depression, two administration officials familiar with the decision confirmed to The Hill on Thursday.聽The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the internal White House economic team, will not release the typical midsummer review of its initial economic projections in July or August even as top Trump administration officials publicly predict a swift recovery from the crisis caused by COVID-19.聽The projections are typically produced jointly by the Office of Management and Budget, CEA and Treasury Department. (Lane and Chalfant, 5/28)
The U.S. economy shrank at a faster-than-expected annual rate of 5% during the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. At least 2.1 million Americans lost their jobs last week, meaning an astonishing 41 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since shutdowns intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus began in mid-March. (Taylor, Boak and Madhani, 5/28)
Administration officials said the data is too volatile to produce reliable projections and that federal agencies responsible for the numbers are overwhelmed with the implementation of federal legislation passed in response to the pandemic, including the $2 trillion CARES Act cleared by Congress in March. The data is 鈥渆xtremely fluid and would produce a less instructive forecast,鈥 one senior official told POLITICO. (Emma, 5/28)
