American politics often goes like this. A politician proposes ambitious social policy. She’s smacked immediately with a barrage of familiar questions: How much does it cost? How are you going to pay for that? What’s the impact on the economy? Will this stop people from working? Have you considered how this might hurt business?

Budget scorekeepers will point to statistics that claim the policy isn’t feasible, that it costs too much, that it won’t generate jobs, or that it will be bad for GDP. They claim to stand apart from partisan politics, but their conclusions always magically end up promoting austerity.

One of the most influential institutions of this sort is the Penn Wharton Budget Model, affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. For our April special issue, Jarod Facundo wrote about how the Penn Wharton Budget Model is a tool financed by the ultra-wealthy to discourage public spending. As Facundo explains, the Penn Wharton Budget Model has mastered the language of rulers at a quicker speed than most others, and that is why it has been so successful.

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