Capitol Confidential
BigGovernment.com
9/26/2010
Obama administration policies have caused “irreperable harm” to the Gulf Coast economy, stifling the energy sector and culling employment within it to a degree previously underestimated by the administration itself.
That is the conclusion drawn by Louisiana State University economics professor, Dr. Joseph Mason, author of a new critique of the Obama administration’s Inter-Agency Economic Report released last week estimating losses due to the deepwater drilling moratorium currently in effect. According to Dr. Mason, that report understated the ban’s impact on job losses by as much as 60 percent.
During a conference call Tuesday, Mason criticized the administration’s methodology for calculating the economic effects of the ban, and said the administration used inflated, flawed logic to calculate its valuation of economic offsets—such as unemployment wages—and their counter effects on the economic downturn. He said the report was inaccurately rosy in describing the Gulf States’ economic recoveries following the BP spill.
“Those states have been irreparably harmed,” Mason said. “Essentially all of these economies have taken the summer off and are trying to get back to the baseline.”
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