Are we going to ever hold the government to the standards we are demanding of the private sector?

Everybody with a brain knew the economy had slowed and turned around long before the election of 2000.

...Shapiro laughed it off, asserting that the Bureau of Economic Analysis is ''the most nonpolitical, nonpartisan agency in the government.''



That begs the question of whether the bureau's very political, very partisan management chief should have known the bureaucrats were on the wrong track.

''No,'' said Shapiro, ''2000 looked very good to us.'' He dismissed the early reports as ''an econometric projection based on estimates.''

The result: headlines in 2000 spewing false information of corporate profits growing at 25 percent, bolstering the stock market and holding up the state of the economy as the election approached. That is the underpinning for the Democratic myth that a growing and vibrant American economy has been sabotaged by President Bush's tax cut. (''We lost the opportunity for long-term economic growth,'' says House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt).



There are one hell of a lot of corporations being pilloried right now for using numbers based on "estimates," including a specific attack on Cheney. Why should the Democrats and the rest of the government get away with this same practice?