“You can find statistics to support almost anything,” Stephen Fuller told the Washington City Paper last year.
“If I were asked to make a case for it, I could make a really strong case for it, and if I were asked to make a strong case against it, I could make a really strong case against it. You do what you are asked to do, and you don’t answer other questions,” Fuller elaborated further, speaking specifically about a study he had considered doing for Wal-Mart.
Fuller, a George Mason University economics professor and noted consultant for multiple industries, has recently taken this ethos and turned his attention to sequestration. Over the past year he’s produced three studies for the leading Pentagon contracting advocacy organization, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). In his analysis of the overall economic impact of sequestration if it occurs, he finds that it will “cost the U.S. economy 2.14 million jobs,” and the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland 449,773 jobs in 2013. Fuller also found that reducing Pentagon spending would cause a decline in the U.S.’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). According to Fuller's study, “The long-term consequences will permanently alter the course of the U.S. economy’s performance.”
In addition to producing studies for Pentagon contractors, Fuller’s services are also routinely employed by realtors and housing developers. The conclusions from his work for those industries stand in stark contrast to his conclusions from the AIA studies. Just last month at the Multifamily Development Symposium, Fuller claimed that 35,000 new housing units are needed in the Washington region, as “1.8 million employment vacancies have to be filled in the next 20 years.”