Buying Convenient Facts May Be Getting Harder.

I doubt anyone will be particularly surprised that the Chamber of Commerce is investing in some predetermined research, but seeing the actual e-mail really makes the whole thing seem quite brazen:

The e-mail, written by the Chamber's senior health policy manager and obtained by The Washington Post, proposes spending $50,000 to hire a "respected economist" to study the impact of health-care legislation, which is expected to come to the Senate floor this week, would have on jobs and the economy.

Step two, according to the e-mail, appears to assume the outcome of the economic review: "The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document."

I wonder how many "respected economists" will sign on to this letter now that the cat is out of the bag. Since lobbyists will always do whatever they can to influence legislation, one welcome trend of late is seeing their stooges get embarrassed, since that may make it harder for these interests to recruit supposedly legitimate spokespeople for their misleading reports. The last time this happened, when PriceWaterhouseCoopers did a fishy study for America's Health Insurance Plans, PWC looked just as foolish as AHIP when the report was quickly discredited. Let that be a warning to any researcher or business tempted by Mammon to fudge the facts about public policy -- your own reputation is also on the line.

-- Tim Fernholz