I have made some doozy prediction errors on this blog, the most notable of which was incorrectly declaring ObamaCare “dead” after the Scott Brown election in January 2010.

I therefore want to catch up on a few of my recent predictions/analyses and compare them with subsequent events. My recent track record is a bit better.

First is a recent one I sort of got wrong.  In early February I analyzed the President’s trade message and the signals he was sending about the Panama and Colombia Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). While I didn’t make a concrete prediction, the point of my post was to be skeptical that the President would ever move these two FTAs forward. It appeared that he was setting himself up to do the Korea FTA only, and to allow the Colombia and Panama FTAs to languish indefinitely.

Since then the President has begun to move forward on all three FTAs. This is great news, and I’m happy that my skeptical lean from early February was incorrect. Kudos to the President for moving all three FTAs.

Second is my March 4th prediction for the final spending level in the FY11 appropriations battle.  The day after negotiations began I wrote:

I predict a final enacted non-emergency discretionary spending level of $1,052 B.

The final enacted level was $1,050 B.  I missed the mark by only $2 B.

Third is my simple analysis from three days ago, when I wrote of the President’s new budget outline:

In this scenario, $4 trillion of deficit reduction over 12 years translates into about $2.8 trillion over 10 years.

As with the FY11 appropriations prediction, I calculated this number from a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Today Lori Montgomery reports:

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blockquote>“Under the Administration’s estimates, the president’s framework saves $2.9 trillion over 10 years and $4 trillion over 12 years,”