Since its inception, the Obama administration has engaged in the deceptive routine of claiming that “economists” or “every economist” or a “consensus” among economists is in lock-step agreement over whatever policy prescription the White House happens to be peddling at the moment.

It began with the stimulus, when President Obama misleadingly asserted that “economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don’t act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach.” Swiftly and boldly, perhaps, but not in the same way. The libertarian Cato Institute found 200 economists, three of them Nobel laureates — James Buchanan, Edward Prescott and Vernon Smith — who disagreed that all “economists” supported the president’s stimulus plan.