More Economic Truthiness: If They Told You, They'd Have to Kill You

Via Atrios, we have MaxSpeak noting the Good News:

The Bush administration's plan to reduce the flow of bad economic news, by eliminating the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), is running into opposition. More than 400 researchers, including 2 Nobel Laureates signed a letter opposing the elimination of the SIPP. The SIPP is the only major longitudinal survey that tracks the same families over time. While it has a representative sample that allows it to be used to examine issues affecting the whole population, it over samples low income households, which makes it especially useful for examining the impact of TANF, Medicaid, and other anti-poverty programs. Ostensibly, the reason for eliminating the SIPP is to save the $40 million annual cost of fielding the survey (@ 6hours of the Iraq war).

Usually, plans to alter or eliminate major surveys are floated well in advance in order to get input from the community of researchers, policy makers, and advocates that rely on the survey. This plan was crafted in the dark of night and kept secret until the 2007 budget was released. Perhaps the secrecy was needed to keep us safe from the terrorists, but this does not seem like best path for producing reliable data.

More here.

Nice to know Dear Leader is evenhanded in his desire to shut down the physical, biological and social sciences to move us back beyond the 20th century into the 19th.

If he keeps it up, he may recreate the 1860s at least.