The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of my personal heroes, famously said that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." That's another way of stating the position argued a few months ago by Dylan Matthews in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. Matthews advocates investing in the kind of non-partisan research associated with the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office. Lawmakers will always argue about the ends of public policy, Matthews concedes, but there shouldn't be so much confusion about the facts; we ought to have a better idea, for example, of which means are appropriate for the promotion of which ends. And about how much it's going to cost.
I'm hoping that the Summer 2013 Glenn Fellows will take a very close look at Matthews's piece as they think about possible policy paper topics for next semester. And I'm hoping that they come away from the WAIP program with a nuanced idea of the "facts" and the extent to which they can be expected to inform public policy.
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