Peter Suderman has a good piece up in Reason magazine about the CBO. I think he does a great job telling its story and describing the role it is playing in the current health care reform debate. That said, I do disagree with the subhead describing the CBO as Obama-care’s chief obstacle (see comments). Suderman was kind enough to respond to my questioning of that point:
But I think it’s a good enough subhead: part of the point of the piece (not the only point!) was that, during the summer, the bill lived and died by the CBO — it exercised a strong pass/fail authority over the bill’s life. And it proved a lot of trouble for Democrats. Indeed, if you look at where the debate’s at today, there’s still a lot of that going on — the sorta-kinda deal they put together last night is contingent upon the CBO’s analysis.
All true. That said, the chief obstacle is the fact that the filibuster has become a de facto 60 vote minimum on everything. Absent that consideration, the CBO wouldn’t be playing nearly as prominent a role. Moreover, having the CBO validate the public option as a deficit reducer didn’t bring any “fiscal hawks” around.
As the title indicates, I think the CBO is best seen as a referee. The President and Sen. Baucus both wanted to get to 60 votes by emphasizing deficit reduction, the CBO made the call as to whether they played fair while doing so according to its sometime idiosyncratic rules. As Suderman notes, we do complain some about the calls, generally speaking, liberals argue that the CBO underestimates various saving measures and we have some cases to back us up. That said, the CBO is also required to be credulous that Congress will implement certain provisions they consistently vote against, so the idiosyncratic bits can cut both ways. However, even if we don’t like some of the calls, playing with a referee is conducive to good policy. I believe it is vital that we find ways to undermine the pernicious and unprecedented impact of the filibuster, but I think we should celebrate the prominence of actual accounting brought by the CBO even if it sometimes makes our lives hard. After all, health care reform has gotten further under this set of conditions than it ever has before.
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