In 2010, the White House and the Congressional Budget Office seized upon the lowest estimate they could find: A brief from Rob Valetta and Katherine Kuang at the San Francisco Fed which suggested that extended unemployment benefits had added only 0.4 percentage points to the unemployment rate by December 2009.

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The forecast is within the 6.1%-6.7% growth range predicted by the government in its budget presented late February and is faster than the estimate of 5% growth in the just-ended fiscal year.

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He has also issued a second budget estimate based on evidence from the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s that tax reform and spending restraint will increase GDP by about 0.5 to one percentage point a year.

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