As soon as the OBR provide inconvenient facts John Swinney resorts to trashing its reputation.
This graph from the OBR report demonstrates how the deficit is affected by different assumptions.
That would put public-sector debt on a steeper upward trajectory than the OBR anticipates.
"The OBR's 2011 growth forecast still looks a bit optimistic even after the downgrade, " he said.
Except they have expressly forbidden the OBR from considering the consequences of alternative government policies.
The OBR is required by statute to issue two economic and fiscal forecasts a year.
Either way, you can see why the OBR chairman thought the prime minister had over-reached.
But unlike Labour, the OBR doesn't seem to think things could have gone much better.
It's the economy - or at least, the economy as viewed by the OBR.
So the chair of the OBR could not be sacked by ministers for being awkward.
In other words, higher than the OBR forecast would have happened under Mr Darling.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has made the same judgment in its recent reports.
The FT used the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) own model to reach this conclusion.
It might be because the OBR has overestimated the amount of spare capacity in the economy.
The OBR will provide the economic and fiscal forecasts on which budgets must be based.
Although services exports have been lacklustre, the OBR reckons that this weakness will not persist.
The current OBR forecast has cash GDP growing by just under 4.3% on average over this period.
We will never know whether the OBR was right to be so downbeat now about our economic potential.
The OBR had previously forecast that the eurozone's economy would recover in the second half of this year.
Hey presto: toxic mix of weak banks, rising unemployment and government debt increasing even faster than the OBR expects.
The OBR estimates the economy's spare capacity is just 2.5% of potential output.
The OBR assumes that spending on health will rise in line with GDP.
As it happens, the OBR does think Mr Osborne made a positive difference to the economy with Wednesday's announcements.
Economists will want to question the OBR's numbers - and they ought to.
Still, that was clearly not Robert Chote's motivation in "clarifying" the OBR's position.
If the OBR is any guide, it suggests Scotland's public sector deficit is going to look healthy for 2011-12.
At the time of the Budget the OBR was hoping for 0.8% growth in 2012 and 2% in 2013.
The first advantage is that the squeaky clean and independent OBR is likely to give him a good alibi.
In effect, that first report from the OBR was its more independent take on the old government's fiscal projections.
The OBR expects it to creep up slightly in 2013 and stay at or above 8% through to the election.
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