Beware of Doug
Robert Waldmann
The Congressional Budget Office is different from you and me. Their forecasts are authoratative — literally. The rules of the House and the Senate refer to CBO estimates and forecasts not some debatable underlying reality.
Hence this slightly edited dialog
Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman: [skip]
We’re not in the old situation where Sen. Grassley once said whatever CBO says is God, you’re God. My judgement, you’re not God.
[skip]
Dr. Elmendorf: Senator, may I respectfully disagree …
OK so the elided text begins
Douglas Elmendorf, CBO Director: Correct
so way back then Elmendorf agreed that He was not God. At the moment it seems that He and Baucus are the only people who still hold that opinion.
In the awesome missmatch Barack Obama vs the House Republican Study Group where 90% of the brains were in Obama’s skull, one of the key takedowns was when Mike Pence claimed that Obama had promised to consider a Republican health care proposal and yet he hadn’t considered the House Republican’s health care proposal. Let’s role the tape
OBAMA: It’s not enough, if you say, for example, that we’ve offered a health care plan
You know, if I’m told, for example, that the solution to dealing with health care costs is tort reform, something that I’ve said I am willing to work with you on, but the CBO or other experts say to me, you know, “At best, this could reduce health care costs relative to where they’re growing by a couple of percentage points or save $5 billion a year, that’s what we can score it at, and it will not bend the cost curve long term or reduce premiums significantly,” then you can’t make the claim that that’s the only thing that we have to do.
So here Obama is debating Pence about whether the Republicans offered an actual plan and the judge of the debate is Doug Elmendorf, who is, technically not God (yet).
Even more bizarre is this contribution to the debate between Paul Krugman and SAOs (senior administration officials). Krugman supports hiring subsidies. They weren’t in the stimulus plan (but Obama just proposed them — good luck with the Senate on that). Krugman basically declares he has been proven right, because the CBO agrees with him.
OK this is a debate between Nobel Laureate Clark Medalist Paul Krugman and (maybe among others) Clark Medalist Larry Summers and the judge is non Clark Medalist Doug Elmendorf.
I remember back before Doug was God. Through no merit of my own I was around the sanctum sanctorum of policy relevant economics the NBER. Krugman and Summers had big offices. Doug Elmendorf shared as small office with other research assistants.
This cartoon was on the door of that office.
Mike Pence is dumb as a bag of hammers, but he should have been able to understand the cartoon. I mean he only had to read 3 words.
Robert,
The problem is that Doug isn’t CBO either. He’s just the director of the CBO. The CBO itself is a large institution with lots of mini-gods and techno-gods, equipped with banks of DGSE models to enhance their godlike powers. But when you have an electorate that’s stupid enough to elect a dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers guy like Mike Pence, then you have to hope that your budget god is at least a well intentioned and benevolent god. It makes sense for Obama to appeal to a godlike authority. Afterall, Pence is a conservative and appeals to god are convincing to people of that mindset. You won’t find too many Republican atheists (Cantab excepted). CBO estimates are the opiate of the masses, so if that’s what it takes to convince the masses, and if the CBO happens to also be right (or as Henry Kissinger might say…the added advantage of being true), then why not appeal to CBO?
To the extent that this self description from the CBO web page is correct, why not reference your argument to their data and analyses?
“CBO’s mandate is to provide the Congress with:
Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and
The information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.”
Well I am willing to grant Doug temporary God powers for my own selfish purposes.
What nobody but Dean Baker seems to know is that CBO numbers on Social Security are WAY different than SSA ones. For example where SSA scores the 75 year actuarial imbalance at 2.01% of payroll CBO has it at 1.3%. This makes a huge difference when crafting policy.
Generally all the Social Security Reform plans out there are submitted to the SSA Office of the Chief Actuary and scored using the Intermediate Cost set of assumptions. But if it ever came to legislation in Congress the relevant Committees are strictly committed to using CBO numbers. (I confirmed this with Paul van de Water who spent decades at the top of SSA and before that CBO’s number shops, from what I can tell his last job made his the actual boss of the Chief Actuary).
So God Doug is kind of my ace in the hole, his numbers keep malicious people from over-fixing Social Security based on what I believe are overly pessimistic SSA numbers.
I certainly don’t worship at the Altar of Doug, his folk made an utterly egregious and unnessessary ruling on Medical Loss Ratios that represented a huge gift to the insurance companies, on issue after issue he seems to have his thumb on the right side of the scales. but for the sake of Social Security I might drop a buck in the Offerings Basket as it comes by and heck maybe do a mild genuflection.
I find your commentary vile. You wonder why coservatives hold your opinions in such distain. I do not disrespect the president but I do not agree with much of his approach. That does not make us all idiots. I am a hard working small business owner that graduated from West Point. Why do you find it so difficult to believe that many do not believe in this administrations social agenda. By the way I do enjoy your web site but how about just a little more respect for diversity of opinion.
Jim is you comment directed at me ? I don’t see how it relates to my post. I wrote that Mike Pence is dumb as a box of hammers. I didn’t write anything about all conservatives. I know people with far right views who are very smart.
I do not believe that representative Pence is one of them.
I have no idea why anyone could imagine that I don’t believe that “many do not believe in this administrations [SIC] social agenda.” I can read polls.
By the way, I have no respect for punctuation (this should be obvious from my posts) but many people tend to infer that those who don’t use commas and apostraphes are not intelligent (I absolutely disagree with this inference). Also some people (definitely not including me) consider it disrespectful to refrain from bothering with punctuation. I strongly doubt that you took that approach to punctuation at West Point.
In any case, I honestly ask, for information and not rhetorically — were you commenting on my post. I can’t see any connection between your accusations and my post. I assumed it must be a comment about another comment in the thread, but it has nothing to do with them either.
Jim is you comment directed at me ? I don’t see how it relates to my post. I wrote that Mike Pence is dumb as a box of hammers. I didn’t write anything about all conservatives. I know people with far right views who are very smart.
I do not believe that representative Pence is one of them.
I have no idea why anyone could imagine that I don’t believe that “many do not believe in this administrations [SIC] social agenda.” I can read polls.
By the way, I have no respect for punctuation (this should be obvious from my posts) but many people tend to infer that those who don’t use commas and apostraphes are not intelligent (I absolutely disagree with this inference). Also some people (definitely not including me) consider it disrespectful to refrain from bothering with punctuation. I strongly doubt that you took that approach to punctuation at West Point.
In any case, I honestly ask, for information and not rhetorically — were you commenting on my post ? I can’t see any connection between your accusations and my post. I assumed it must be a comment about another comment in the thread, but it has nothing to do with them either.