"The CBO is Entitled to Their Opinion"

The title of this piece is a remark made on January 6 by Speaker of the House John Boehner, of Ohio. Here are the relevant clips from the New York Times account of the controversy.

I will pursue the controversy below, after these two announcements. First, I have another blog. It is called VikingDuck (available at www.VikingDuck.blogspot.com) and is, essentially, a work blog. I have a potential stream of observations directed at each of the four courses I teach at PSU. The students at PSU are "Vikings" on the grounds that the Viking is the symbol/mascot of Portland State University. I am a Duck on the grounds that I got my Ph. D., in the present context, but "teaching credential," at the University of Oregon. So I am the Viking Duck of the blog title.

The second announcement is that I have lifted this post, stroke for stroke with only a few editorial clarifications, from the VikingDuck blog, where I put it to attract the attention of my PS 414 (Public Policy) students. But after having written it, I thought it was good enough to share with friends.

View A The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda.

View B “I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,” he said. “C.B.O. is entitled to their opinion."

But he said Democrats had manipulated the rules established for determining the cost of a program under the 1974 Budget Act. So Speaker Boehner holds "View B." He alleges "chicanery" by the Democrats, going as far back as the 1974 Budget Act. I am quite sure it goes further back than that and I am sure it is not limited to the assumptions underlying the calculation of program costs.

What interested me in this exchange is the assertion of belief--the Speaker offered no substantiation other than his personal belief--as a way of contradicting a study by a reputable agency. Agencies don't get much more reputable than the Congressional Budget Office. It is the counterpart of the executive branch's Office of Office of Management and Budget, formerly the Bureau of the Budget.

That means that every new majority in Congress has the incentive to destroy the integrity of the CBO in exchange for short-term political gains. The CBO has successfully resisted all such attempts, which is why its budget estimates are still respected.

Serious discussion of the budget implications are impaired, to choose the mildest word I can conjure at the moment, by the assertion of personal belief as a counter to studies crafted under public criteria by well-respected agencies. So, let's say I really believe that the Framers' estimate of the value of black Americans as roughly three-fifths of a white person were about right and that that view should be returned to the active premise of policy. What then? Or I really believe that the Framers really had in mind only service in local militias when they crafted the Second Amendment and that no direct right to bear arms was ever intended. What then? Or that the Framers never intended that there be a direct and independent "right to privacy" in the Constitution. What then?

I really don't think government can be run at all on such a basis and I wish Speaker Boehner agreed with me.