How reliable are Washington interest groups?

In September 2003, a coalition made up of three Washington groups decried the then current deficits. The groups in the joint statement were the Committee for Economic Development, The Concord Coalition and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. CED describes itself as "the best of business thinking." Their website says "CED believes that the primary cause of America's long-term federal budget problem is the acceleration of entitlement spending. " The Concord Coalition is a project of two former Washington insiders (Pete Peterson and Warren Rudman). Their website comments on the current budget using the following language "On the plus side, it calls for significant deficit reduction, improves transparency, and reflects a commitment to paying for new initiatives. The downside risk is that many things have to go right for the plan to work. The economic assumptions are optimistic, as are the assumed savings from winding down the war in Iraq. " They do project that interest spending in the budget would go from 5% of the budget to 12%. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities is an admittedly left of center group. It claims on its website "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is one of the nation’s premier policy organizations working at the federal and state levels on fiscal policy and public programs that affect low- and moderate-income families and individuals."

What is surprising to me is that none of these groups seems to have anything substantive about the risks associated with the projected budget deficits proposed by the administration. One would expect CBPP not to have anything - their view of the world seems to have never met a tax they did not like nor a non-defense reduction they could support. Concord actually had a part in a movie called IOUSA which describes the perils of out of control spending. But it strikes me as odd that they could be silent with the current budget projections when they were so alarmed in 2003 with deficit projections much much smaller.