First, Lay surely had a purpose in calling -- according to the Wall Street Journal, Enron "headed the lobbying coalition of companies seeking repeal" of the tax. On Oct. 3, the Journal had reported that lobbyists were "making the case on Capitol Hill" for retroactive relief, an idea Daniels denies anyone had "even heard of." And just one day after the Daniels-Lay call, the retroactive repeal provision -- which would have refunded corporations for credits they received under the alternative minimum tax -- passed a key House committee as part of the stimulus legislation. As the administration's chief budget officer, Daniels was surely following the progress of this key economic legislation and understood Lay's interest in its prospects.

Daniels also has a penchant for using the language of political jargon to attack administration opponents. While this is hardly unique, he blasts his opponents with a relish not seen in his technocratic predecessors. During a press briefing Feb. 4, he hyperbolically derided opponents of the tax cut for having "blamed [it] for everything except mad cow disease." And last December on CNN's "Late Edition", he caricatured "tax and spend extremists in the Democratic Senate caucus," calling them "people for whom taxes can't be high enough and we can never spend too much government money."

OMB's dishonesty

Under Daniels, OMB is marketing some of its proposals with an often casual disregard for intellectual honesty. The administration's new budget proposal features a number of statements like this:

"In the 1997 Budget, rising deficits were forecast totaling $1.4 trillion over a 10-year horizon. By the 2002 budget, steadily rising surpluses were projected over a 10-year period, totaling $5.6 trillion. Due to the events of last year, the latest projections are in between these wildly divergent estimates."

The phrase "events of last year" suggests that the terrorist attacks and the recession caused the decline in the projected surplus, while obscuring the fact that 41 percent of the total surplus reduction is attributable to the tax cut (according to the CBO). Note how the statement is carefully constructed to be technically true -- the tax cut was also an "event" that took place last year.

In the federal budget process, OMB has employed a number of accounting devices and misleading assumptions to conceal the true costs of tax cuts, restore budgets to balance artificially and otherwise tried to achieve political ends by tricky budgetary means. In the Bush budget plan, for example, the administration projects a return to surpluses in 2004 or 2005, but this ignores the cost of extending a provision protecting millions of middle income taxpayers from a tax increase under the individual alternative minimum tax, as Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington Post. There is near-unanimous agreement that this provision will have to be corrected at great cost, but OMB is silent on it in the budget proposal.

More than marketing

It is a matter of serious public concern that the federal budget director has become just another spinner dragging down public debate. Though he is a political appointee heading an executive agency, Daniels is also a public official with a larger responsibility to promote honesty in federal budget debates. But after more than a year at his position, he still frequently makes deceptive claims  often without challenge. Daniels may not recognize the difference from his previous job, but we must. It is unacceptable to market our nation's economic policies like Prozac.

Research assistance by Dave Clifford.

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