Casablanca on the Potomac

Democrats jumped on today’s news, published on the front page of the Washington Post, that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are trying to raise funds for an economic-impact study of health care reform legislation.

An email from a Chamber official, obtained by the Post, said a “respected economist” would be hired to do the study. The economist’s conclusion—“that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy”—would then be used for ads and other lobbying purposes.

The Democratic National Committee quickly seized on the Chamber official’s presumption that the appointed economist would reach the same conclusion the Chamber has already reached.

“How far will the U.S. Chamber of Commerce go to damage its own credibility in pursuit of right-wing ideology?” read the headline of a DNC email sent to reporters this morning. “Far, very far. From denying climate change to phony studies—U.S. Chamber just makes it up these days.”

The words of Captain Renault in Casablanca come to mind: “I’m shocked. Shocked.”

The Vichy French officer was talking about finding gambling at Rick’s, but here we’re talking about an interest group commissioning a study to advance its own interest. Happens all the time—not just in Washington, but also in every city in America—on issues as big as building new stadiums to as mundane as rezoning requests. In almost every case, the group funding the study gets the conclusion it’s looking for.

In the few cases where the final answer comes out another way, the public never hears about it. The group that paid for the study tosses it in the trash and tells the author not to expect any more work to be coming his or her way.

The mistake the Chamber official made was stating explicitly what everybody already knew implicitly: that the study would conclude health care reform would be bad for the economy.

Given the ongoing campaign to discredit the Chamber as the business community’s biggest voice in Washington, it’s no surprise that this email found its way to a reporter. It is kind of puzzling, however, that the Post thought this was front-page news.

Organizations of every ideological stripe have funded similar studies on health care reform. Conservative groups hire conservative economists. Liberal groups hire liberal economists. Small Business Majority, a Democratic-leaning organization that supports health care reform, earlier this year hired an economist that—surprise—concluded small businesses would benefit from the legislation.

You’ve got to wonder why interest groups keep commissioning such studies. Good reporters—there are still a few of them left—take such studies with a grain of salt. If they write about them, they usually find other studies, by equally credentialed economists, that reach opposite conclusions. The result is a “he said, she said” story that might make some noise but sheds little light.

Who knows why the Post decided this study was front-page news. It was a Monday-morning paper, coming off a slow news day, so that may be part of it. Or the Post may just smell blood in the water as far as the Chamber goes, and wants to get in on the kill.

In any case, the Chamber and the other business groups that planned to fund the study should forget about it and save their $50,000. Let’s leave the health care reform studies to the Congressional Budget Office and other neutral parties.