Monday, April 11, 2011

The Left’s Double Standards on CBO’s Impartiality

The Post’s Ezra Klein has an interesting blog post this afternoon regarding Peter Orszag, and whether he should have left his position as Congressional Budget Office Director to take the post heading the Office of Management and Budget.  Among the excerpts:

I don’t think the interesting question is whether Peter Orszag wanted the job of OMB director.  I think it’s whether Barack Obama should’ve given him the job of OMB director.  Remember, before Orszag joined the administration, he was leading the Congressional Budget Office, where he’d embarked on a one-man crusade to convince Congress of the economic necessity of health-care reform.  And CBO ended up being absolutely crucial to the bill’s passage.

Now, I don’t think the agency’s estimates would’ve been very different if Orszag had stuck around.  A lot of the modeling CBO used was developed during Orszag’s time there.  But I think Orszag was more convinced than his successor, Doug Elmendorf, of the wisdom and urgency of the project, and that would’ve come through in both his testimony and in his private dealings with members of Congress. Perhaps that wouldn’t have made much of a difference.  But perhaps it would’ve, at least insofar as CBO would’ve spoken more clearly and forcefully throughout the debate, and worked harder to keep its estimates from being misinterpreted or incorrectly spun.  For what it’s worth, when Orszag was named to OMB, I was just completing a profile of him, and I had been predicting around the office that he’d be left at CBO because he was more valuable to the Obama administration there.

So in sum: Dr. Orszag was “on a one-man crusade” – i.e., pursuing an overtly political agenda in a non-partisan role – and should have stayed at CBO because he would have “spoken more clearly…to keep [CBO’s] estimates from being misinterpreted or incorrectly spun,” thereby making himself “valuable to the Obama Administration.”  If ever there were an argument AGAINST Dr. Orszag remaining CBO Director, Klein just made it himself. (For what it’s worth, former GAO head David Walker resigned his post as Comptroller General in 2008, precisely BECAUSE he wanted to engage in a “one-man crusade” against America’s rising debt and deficits – and doing so from a non-partisan government role would have raised questions about GAO’s impartiality.)

Remember, this post arguing that keeping Peter Orszag as CBO Director would have been “valuable” in the passage of Obamacare came from the same individual who only a few months ago accused Republicans of engaging in a “war” against the non-partisan CBO.  Keep those double standards in mind the next time the Left argues that Republicans have disparaged, or otherwise undermined, CBO’s impartial objectivity.