Situational Love for the CBO
Hero of conservatism, destroyer of budgetary balance.
Sam Stein has a very good item on the right’s situational affection for Congressional Budget Office scores:
When the CBO predicted in 2004 that Bush’s new tax and spending proposals would produce deficits of $2.75 trillion over ten years, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget declared that ”even CBO would admit we don’t honestly know what these numbers will look like 10 years from now.”
That same year, the Bush administration pushed forward with its plans for Medicare Part D despite the fact that its internal cost estimates were $139 billion more than those offered by the CBO. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee had worked diligently to defeat the attempts of their Democratic colleagues to make those estimates public.
In a similar vein, conservatives were beside themselves when the CBO refused to run the 2004 Bush tax cuts through various economic models to see if the government could, in the end, make money by stimulating spending. Rather, the CBO used a “static” method and found $1.2 trillion worth of deficits through the next decade. Republicans, naturally, largely ignored the findings.
Keep that in mind when you hear Republicans saying that the CBO estimates of the House health care bill ought to deal them some kind of death blow. The larger issue, however, isn’t situational love for the CBO so much as it is situational regard for budgetary balance. When Republicans ran the show they gleefully put wars, tax cuts, Pentagon budget increases, and even Medicare expansion on the national credit card.
That said, annoying as conservative hypocrisy on this score is, it doesn’t burn me nearly as much as “centrist” hypocrisy does. When you see a moderate Democrat who didn’t mind voting for the Bush tax cuts—Ben Nelson or Max Baucus say—now worrying that the country doesn’t have the money to make health care affordable, then you really need to wonder where their priorities are.
27 Responses to “Situational Love for the CBO”
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July 19th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Right. Joe Biden said it best, “we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt.”
So here you are saying we have to spend more money to make healthcare cheaper… and you think that’s believable? Of course it isn’t. Who cares what the conservatives did, you’re perpetrating a fraud right here and now.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Shooter 242,
There’s nothing paradoxical about what Biden said. Have you ever heard these sayings:
“Have to spend money to make money” or;
“penny wise, pound foolish”
These sayings should give you a good idea.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:18 am
“That said, annoying as conservative hypocrisy on this score is, it doesn’t burn me nearly as much as “centrist” hypocrisy does”
I honestly don’t understand why.
At least the conservatives have an underlying philosophy here: the Grover Norquist / Ronald Reagan idea of building unsustainable deficits in order to force what currently seem to be politically unpalatable spending cuts down the road.
That philosophy may be nuts, dangerous, and immoral, but at least it’s a philosophy.
The “centrist” hypocrisy, on the other hand, is nothing but pure hypocrisy.
—–
And while we’re on the topic, if the Obama administration were smart about their political future and the political future of the Democratic Party, they’d cram a healthcare reform bill with a bigger CBO score than currently seems palatable through the system.
A healthcare bill with bigger subsidies that kicks in before 2013 would cost a bigger political furor in 2009, but it’d be more popular with the electorate, and it’d be more popular with the electorate sooner, which would help in 2010, 2012, and 2014…
July 19th, 2009 at 9:33 am
You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. We won the midterms. Universal health care is our due.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hell, it’d be an achievement just to get the media discussants to properly quote the CBO’s evaluation of Friday’s HR3200 — i.e., not just citing the program federal costs without the simultaneously estimated savings and revenue increases (CBO’s PDF), not to mention savings achieved by individuals, families, businesses, and state and local governments.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Also, businesses should never spend money on advertising because then the advertising spending would count negatively in their budgets.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:41 am
The larger point is that CBO estimates nearly always understate the costs. So never mind who’s touting them; never mind how much you think anyone deserves universal health care. You need to figure out what other spending we don’t need first. Maybe infinite subsidies to bankers would be a useful place to start.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Even beyond all the excellent points you make regarding Republican hypocrisy, it seems to me that if the CBO is saying that health care reform as now envisioned will be too costly, what that really suggests is that we need to go to a public payer system.
Doing nothing is simply unacceptable. It’s hard to understand how the GOP doesn’t understand that; perhaps their eagerness to score political points has blinded them to the obvious truth.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Quite often, “doing nothing” is vastly preferable to “doing something stupid”. Since Obama has outsourced the production of this bill to the House (and thus, the majority party’s special interests), this is one of those times.
While our current semi-socialized health care system sucks, a bad bill won’t be an improvement.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:54 am
The CBO is not saying that health reform now, specifically HR3200, would be ‘too costly’. There are those who are either ignorant of or manipulating the CBO’s actual conclusions, but that’s not it.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
then you really need to wonder where their priorities are.
It’s not that hard to figure out where their priorites are, it’s the same as the rich people’s.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Hi, I’m shooter.
I pay a $280 water bill every month. Can you believe that my neighbor wants me to have a plumber fix my dripping sink? What am I, made of money?
July 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I only hope that the feigned stupidity over Joe Biden’s point is spread by the Republican noise machine as widely as their contempt for tire gauges last summer.
Given enough press, this has the potential to do as much damage to their reputation as that hilarious bit of FAIL.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
You know, the second example that Stein offers is actually an example of Republicans deferring to the CBO. But any stick works for a moron. (The CBO’s estimates were closer to be correct than the estimates the Democrats were scandalized about, btw, but that too is ignored by the reality based.)
July 19th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The title of the post is “Situational Love of the CBO,” Thomas.
Ponder that. It seems to have eluded you.
Clearly.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I think part of the problem here is that in saner political times, Nelson and Baucus would be Republicans. They clearly aren’t Democrats in the usual sense of the term.
But because the current Republican party has no use for someone as moderate and sane as Ben Nelson (a terrifying reminder of the current state of mind of the Republican Party), he’s a Democrat despite having very little in common with the progressive wing of the party. So he gets a D by his name and votes like a Taft.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
“Have to spend money to make money” or;
“penny wise, pound foolish”
I like this one, “you can’t borrow yourself out of debt.”
July 19th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
But you can borrow yourself out of debt. If you borrow enough, and invest it on things with a sufficiently profitable rate of return. That’s a staggeringly huge “if”, but it’s real.
This isn’t that uncommon for anyone who knows successful small business operators. It’s really uncommon for unsuccessful small business operators.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I continue to be amazed how the dishonesty of Republicans is used to justify the continued dishonesty of Democrats. Is there really a difference in the parties anymore?
Bickering over 1.2 or 2.75 trillion seems like pocket change compared to the current 10 year projections.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Cost for whom? The medical costs will be there regardless -either individuals pay it, borrowing money to do so, or try to postpone medical care – or the government pays it, spreading the costs out among tax payers.
The centrists are taking advantage of Obama’s timid way of putting the problem, which has concentrated not on the money going to health care at the moment, but on how much the government cost will be. Which is of course a false issue. The government could save a lot of money by not building or repairing highways, and letting people contribute to that cost privately, but the cost would still be there. Upping the volume on the outrageous cost of the present system will, of course, go against the politic’s fear of doing anything to separate themselves from their rich friends. But this won’t be done without a strong whiff of populism.
Two trillion for banks in six months, a trillion for health care over five years. If the goal is achieved, it doesn’t matter – another middle class entitlement that nobody will dare attack. Which is how it should be.
July 19th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Joe, WTF do you think “in a similar vein” means? If you think that it means “in the opposite way”, well, you are as stupid as Stein and our host, who can’t tell the difference between opposing CBO and supporting it, and also can’t tell that the tu quoque point in partisan situations is one that typically plays both ways (as it does with these examples).
July 19th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Once again, Thomas, I’m not the one with the understanding problem here.
I comprehended Matt’s point just fine. I understood what the examples he drew on were meant to show just fine.
Is this one of those “I was right to be wrong, and you were wrong to be right!” type of things, like people used to say about supporting the Iraq War?
You didn’t. Perhaps the next time you can’t quite follow Matt’s thinking, you won’t immediately leap to the assumption that the problem is his.
Once again, the title of the post: Situational Love For the CBO.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
It means “similarly.” The Republicans were reality-averse, partisan hacks when they ignored the CBO’s scoring of Medicare Part D. They based their opinion of its usefulness entirely on whether it was politically convenient.
In a similar vein, they were reality-averse, partisan hacks when they flip-flopped and demanded that the CBO score the 2004 tack cuts. Just as they based their opinion on its usefulness purely on whether the CBO’s analysis was politically convenient when it came to Medicare Part D, the operated in a similar vein when it came to the 2004 tax cuts.
This is not difficult stuff. Perhaps pausing for a moment to think before shouting “Aha! I gotcha!” will save you from such embarrassment in the future.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Actually, if you have a good plan for investing the money you borrow, doing so in such a fashion as to either make money or save money at a greater rate than you borrowed it at, you very much can borrow yourself out of debt.
In fact, doing so is more common than not amongst small-business startups. It’s so commonplace as to be invisible.
When you’re the US Federal Government and the 10-year yield on Treasury Bonds is within spitting distance of inflation, it’s actually really easy to borrow one’s way out of debt.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Further: Although historically, Republican presidential administrations have not shown good rates of return on the debt they run up. Democrats, however, have historically excellent rates of return on their fiscal policies.
Case 1: See, Reagan, Ronald. See, Bush, George W.
Case 2: See, Clinton, William J. See: Carter, Jimmy. See: Roosevelt, Franklin Delno.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
But you can borrow yourself out of debt. If you borrow enough, and invest it on things with a sufficiently profitable rate of return. That’s a staggeringly huge “if”, but it’s real.
Except that government doesn’t really get a “rate of return” because it doesn’t sell much stuff. Almost all of its money comes simply rom taking it from people.
In any case, the real goal of both the Bush wing ofthe GOP and the Democrats is to print our way out of debt, and to screw over our creditors with devalued dollars (and simultaneously screw over anyone who tried to save money).
July 20th, 2009 at 1:14 am
You sure you’re not actually Lyndon LaRouche, Glaivester?
In any case, the idea that ‘government doesn’t really get a “rate of return” because it doesn’t sell much stuff. Almost all of its money comes simply rom taking it from people.’ is ridiculous. The government is entirely capable of taking money, spending on something valuable, and having the net value to society be greater than break-even afterwards. The entire idea of health care reform as we know it is that we spend money up front and then what we build with that money lets us do health care more cheaply later on.
For historical examples, well, just look up ‘ARPANET’ on Wikipedia. Alternatively, consider the Eire Canal. Or saving Europe from the Nazis.