Kent Conrad Erecting New Procedural Hurdles to Health Reform
Budget master Kent Conrad
This is a bit in the weeds, but you should go read Ryan Grim’s story about Kent Conrad directing the CBO to score health care reform in a 20-year budget window rather than the usual ten. This will tend to make the score less accurate, since projections get more and more uncertain the further you go out. It will also make it harder to pass a health care bill. But it will disadvantage the more-liberal House bill more than it disadvantages the Senate bill. And I think it’s usually best to assume that members engage in these kind of procedural moves because they understand their impact—Conrad is trying to kneecap the liberal version of health reform, and considers making it harder to pass any kind of health reform an acceptable price to pay to meet that goal.
Officially, though, we’re just supposed to think that Conrad really, really hates budget deficits. But as Ezra Klein notes, Conrad’s record doesn’t totally support that:
The first came earlier this year when Conrad modified Obama’s first budget. Obama had eliminated a couple of Bush-era gimmicks that made the deficit appear smaller than it really was. Bush, for instance, shortened the budget window from 10 years to five, so the total deficit sounded smaller. Obama’s budget returned it to the traditional 10. And then Conrad changed it back. The Politico reported that Conrad made this decision “because of the uncertainty of long-range forecasts.” Others thought he did it to hide the size of the deficit. In any case, 10 years, as the alert reader will notice, is less than 20 years. If 10 years was too long a time period for certainty, then it is difficult to see how 20 years could possibly be acceptable.
The second came in 2003, when Conrad voted for the Medicare Modernization Act, better known as Medicare Part D. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would increase the federal deficit by $421 billion and reduce federal revenue by another $174 billion. The total cost to the deficit, then, neared $600 billion. Conrad not only accepted the CBO’s 10-year time frame, but he voted for the bill. His press release enthusiastically touted the fact that the bill would “bring more than $70 million to North Dakota hospitals over the next ten years.”
Conrad’s record in the Senate, then, would lead you to believe a couple of things. For one, he distrusts long-range projections. Even 10 years is too uncertain. He also believes some priorities overwhelm deficit concerns, health-care coverage being one of them. But when faced with a health-care reform that will be deficit neutral within the 10-year time frame, he is demanding that it instead be measured against an even more uncertain 20-year time frame, and by an agency that he claims underestimates savings. The CBO’s scores are terrible, in other words, and come in such small portions!
To be fair to Conrad, the vast majority of soi disant “deficit hawks” on the Hill are huge hypocrites, much worse than Conrad. Conrad didn’t vote for the 2001 Bush tax cut, the invasion of Iraq, the 2003 tax cut, or the Kyl-Lincoln estate tax cut all of which attracted Democratic support, typically from the kind of members who complain about deficits. So in the scheme of things, he really is a committed deficit hawk. Still, per Ezra’s post there’s still lots of wiggle-room in this commitment, and the latest twist makes very little sense on the merits.
Note that the theory that the CBO underestimates the cost savings in health reform isn’t just some nutty theory. Among others, the Institute of Medicine agrees. I think there are sound reasons for the CBO to be conservative in its approach, but we should keep in mind the fact that the CBO’s approach is deliberately designed to be conservative.
15 Responses to “Kent Conrad Erecting New Procedural Hurdles to Health Reform”
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Isn’t the administration’s plan to have the new health care system phase in over like four years? Doesn’t that mean the 10-year CBO estimate will cover only like six years of the fully ramped up new system? If so, it seems somewhat misleading to call that the 10-year cost, and maybe that’s where the drive for a 20-year estimate come from.
That’s not to diminish the criticism Conrad is getting for not being a loyal team player.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Which continues to beg the question of why tax cuts for the rich remain a higher national priority than promoting the general welfare.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
There you go again, Matt. Kent Conrad wants to “kneecap” reform? Accusing Conrad of racism just because you disagree with him might be the height of depravity, but sadly that tactics has become the hole all Democrats dig themselves into.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Hmmm. New reports indicate that Max raises $500 Billion for his $880 Billion plan by taking the money out of MEDICARE.
Looks like those old farts yelling on the National Mall last Saturday might have something to be concerned about.
Not the Death Panels, of course. Looks like the government won’t have the MONEY to set up Death Panels. Will just have to let Nature and Darwin make the judgement calls.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
So let’s see — you extend coverage to 40 some million people by stealing $500 Billion out of Medicare? ANd it took Max Six Months to come up with this brainstorm?
And AARP is AGREES with this?
September 16th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Wait — is Matt saying in effect that Kent Conrad pulled this hurdle from his “bag of tricks”? Like Felix the Cat? Racist.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I no longer really give a shit. When and if Tauzincare passes it’ll be a piece of shit that will allow the elites to go on making a bundle of health care at the expense of average people. Fuck this administration. This says it best:
FROM: http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/brent-budowsky/58875-realignment-dead-dealignment-now
“Democratic president and Congress means trading one rip-off for another, giving them neither hope, nor change, nor an end to their pain. 2008 was a 1932 moment. But the power of eloquence ends when the reality of people’s lives does not change. If a president reads a book about Franklin Roosevelt and then names Timothy Geithner to the Treasury, America gets Geithner, not Roosevelt, and more status quo, not change.”
September 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
And I see ole Max doesn’t want to raise any taxes the Superrich.
The people who actually DO THE FUCKING WORK –the Doctors –get cornholed with a broken beer bottle while the smiling fucking lawyers don’t suffer even a paper cut.
We were wrong. Max ain’t being bought off to kneecap healthcare reform.
He’s been hired to destroy the Democratic Party.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
After reading this study by Rudolph Penner on the accuracy of CBO forecasts, I wonder why the CBO publishes (or anybody pays attention to) any projections beyond five years. Penner didn’t have enough data to look at ten-year projections. Nonetheless, since the budget projections concerned the size of the surplus at the beginning of the decade, it is safe to say that the projections are lacking when compared to a relevant standard, such as a chimp with a dartboard.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
So let’s see — you extend coverage to 40 some million people by stealing $500 Billion out of Medicare?
Don: We’re talking about a program that is slated to spend, what, six or seven trillion over those ten years? I think it’s more smoke and mirrors than it is “sticking it to seniors.” But even if it were the latter, it’s not as if anybody is proposing an actual cut in Medicare. Rather, what’s being proposed is a cut in the already significant rate of growth in the program (a program that even most liberals will admit is rife with waste and fraud). Anyway, I think we can all take some comfort in the fact that old people vote in very large numbers, and those numbers are growing every day as a percentage of the electorate: any real pain caused by government cuts will face a ferocious push back at the polls.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
If all this does is delay/interfere with Baucus-care, who even gives a damn? His proposal is a political turd, doesn’t come close to universality, and is shockingly regressive (and doesn’t seem to take those regressivity problems seriously at all). At this point Democrats should actually be pushing for delay, because passing this thing is actually worse than doing nothing.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I have heard Conrad is an ass master as well. He like ass.
He like ass so much he don’t know what to do about health care.
I think he likes ass too much. You need to have ass in moderation, just like healthcare, or it is not special. Kent is so nice. But he only likes two things, pretending to be a deficit hawk and David Broder. What kind of life is that?
September 16th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Why is the CBO allowed to project numbers without errorbars? I think the CBO (or any other) forecasts would be a lot more informative if they were forced to concede to us that over 20 years they project that the plan will cost “$2 trillion plus or minus $5 trillion”.
Economics is such a waste of time…
September 16th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
20 years!?!? Is he nuts? How does Conrad get to make this decision on his own?
When we make any fiscal forecast out 5 years (in the computer technology industry) we know that we’re primarily guessing.
But 20 years? Good lord! NOTHING stays equal or according to recent trends for that long a period of time.
That is complete NONSENSE.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
[...] year window instead of the typical ten. Will this render an accurate measure of budget cost? No! As Matt Yglesias points out: This will tend to make the score less accurate, since projections get more and more uncertain the [...]