Conservatives In US And UK Risk All By Making Policy Without Knowing Impacts

I hope we can all admit that conservatism, despite its lip service to the contrary, now has absolutely no interest in dealing with facts or analysis about the programs they wish to introduce. In the US, the point of conservatives these days is to simply grant major tax cuts to the wealthy by whatever means possible. In the UK, Theresa May insists on moving ahead with a hard Brexit despite the apparent dangers to the UK economy and the existing union. And one thing they both have in common is a lack of interest in analyzing the effects of those positions.

Paul Ryan rammed Trumpcare through two committees in the House before he had a CBO score on the bill. This was absolutely intentional, done in the hope of creating enough momentum that the CBO score could be ignored. That proved to be a potentially fatal tactic when the devastating CBO numbers came out. Now, in an act of ultimate hypocrisy, Ryan is claiming that the bill can now be tweaked in response to the CBO report.

In the UK, Theresa May has now gotten the parliamentary authority to invoke Article 50 and she intends to do so by the end of this month. But David Davis, the secretary for Brexit, admitted to the parliamentary committee overseeing the withdrawal from the EU that the government had performed no additional studies on the potential impact to the UK economy by withdrawing from the EU other than the ones performed before the Brexit vote was taken. Said Davis, “They made an estimate during the referendum campaign, but I think one of the issues that’s arisen is that those forecasts don’t appear to have exactly been very robust since then…Much of this is about mitigation. Any forecast that you make depends on the mitigation. As a result, it is rather otiose to do the forecast before you have concluded what mitigation is possible.”

Admittedly, there are so many potential impacts to the UK economy from tariffs to border controls to agriculture that putting together an accurate forecast for an unknown final deal is impossible at this time. But it is possible to put together forecasts that look at the various contingencies of the individual pieces. Instead, according to Davis, “The simple truth is that you’ve got to do this in sequence. All of these things are being done piece by piece. When we have finished making the Lego blocks, we will build the house. And then we will have the forecast you are talking about.” This is ridiculous because, in the end, Davis and May may very well end up in the same place as Paul Ryan, having negotiated a deal only to find out that the numbers will devastating.

In addition, Davis and other members of May’s cabinet like Boris Johnson and Liam Fox are floating the idea that the UK could leave the EU without a Brexit deal at all. That is a plan that could be forecast right now but I’m sure the government will never do it because everyone suspects the numbers will be horrendous.

It’s hard to know whether it is ideology or hubris that drives thinking like this. But putting forward policy without having a pretty good idea of how it will effect jobs, insurance, government finance, or the economy as a whole is a recipe for disaster. Incredibly, both the conservatives in the US and the UK seem to be willing to jump into the abyss without knowing what’s down there.