Watch: Trump Adviser Tells Fox Biz Shutdown Economic Damage ‘A Little Bit Worse’ Than Expected. It’s Double.
Donald Trump‘s shutdown will cost the economy “a little bit” more than originally expected, according to White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett. According to Kevin Hassett a few hours later, it will be double their previous estimate. Fact check: Hassett 2 is right.
On Tuesday afternoon’s edition of Fox Business Network’s After the Bell, Fox Biz reporter Blake Burman reported from the North Lawn of the White House that The White House now estimates the cost of the shutdown to economic growth to be .13 percent of quarterly GDP every week, which would equal 1.7% if the shutdown lasted an entire quarter.
Co-host Melissa Francis then asked Hassett, who was weirdly appearing from about five feet away from Burman, if that estimate sounded correct.
“Right, so what happens is that when the Bureau of Economic Analysis, when they calculate GDP, what they do is they basically have to estimate how much the government produces, and their estimate of how much the government produces is based on just government workers going to work and getting paid,” Hassett explained.
“And so if government workers don’t go to work, then they reduce their output calculations accordingly. We made an early estimate right at the beginning of the crisis that was a little bit lower than the estimate you just cited, and have been studying hard as this has gone on and have found that actually, the damage is a little bit worse because of government contractors, something that was excluded from our first analysis.”
But according to the Kevin Hassett who spoke to The New York Times for a story published hours later, the new estimate is double what the White House previously thought the damage o the economy would be. The .13 percent number Hassett touted, however, was the same.
If we are to believe all of the Kevin Hassetts across time, however, then the new numbers are actually worse than double. On January 3, Hassett told reporters that the White House estimate was .10 percent for “every two weeks” of the shutdown, or .05 percent per week. That’s significantly less than half of the new estimate.
Hassett has been consistent in trying to blame Democrats for the damage the shutdown is doing for the economy, but according to a raft of new polls, Americans overwhelmingly blame Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown, and Americans remain steadfastly opposed to the border wall funding that Trump has demanded in exchange for reopening the government.
Watch both clips above, via FBN and C-SPAN.
[image via screengrab]
