Your Grammar Nazi

"As such" is not a synonym for "therefore" or "thus," although a lot of bad writers use it to try to make themselves sound sophisticated.  Trust me, you all: it makes you sound illiterate.

 

Suzy Khimm at Wonkblog:

Right now, their plan seems to be that “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will introduce a budget that will balance in 10 years — a proposal to cut dramatically more than his spending plan last year,” my colleagues report.
As such, the House and Senate would almost certainly have to go to conference to come up with a compromise between each chamber’s budget resolution ...

Here's the rule with examples:

Increasingly, the phrase as such is misused as an all-purpose (but grammatically incorrect) transitional phrase.  Such is a pronoun that must have an identifiable antecedent, but in today’s usage it often has none.

            Example 1 (correct):

            She is the committee chair.  As such, she is responsible for scheduling the meetings.

            Explanation: Here, the antecedent of such is chair.  It can replace such:   She is the committee chair.  As chair, she is responsible for scheduling the meetings.

                                                

            Example 2 (incorrect):

            Congress intended to provide an exhaustive list of examples, and it did not mention websites.  As such, the statute does not cover websites.   

            Explanation:  Such has no antecedent here; it cannot be replaced with list or any other word in the first sentence.  The writer of example 2 incorrectly used as such as a generic transitional phrase.  “Therefore” would be a better choice.