Wait, does this mean it's okay to cite the CBO again?
Republicans and the CBO numbers are like Rachel and Ross on "Friends"... they're dating other people, but now they're a couple, whoops they're broken up, hooray they're back together!
Marcel - they weren't impugning the office in the health care "debates", they were asserting garbage-in-garbage-out, i.e., that unrealistic assumptions were forced on the CBO leading to inaccurate results.
(There is another secondary consistent criticism of the CBO using static scoring, but I'm 99% certaint that's not what you were referring to.)
Eric Cantor on the CBO health care estimate, June 16, 2009: "I think the news yesterday from the CBO is the turning point in the healthcare debate so that we will be able to put some reason back into the discussion here and be able to produce for the middle-class families in this country. When CBO says, number one, we're going to be spending $1 trillion - and that is a down payment on the cost of this healthcare reform - it is troubling when we're trying to save money that we would be calling for that kind of expenditure. Number two, when CBO says that about a third of the uninsured is what will be insured under this bill, leaving two-thirds uninsured still without coverage, certainly doesn't reach the mark that we're trying to accomplish."
Eric Cantor on the revised CBO health care estimate, June 24, 2009: "Today, now we are reading the reports that have come out this week that CBO has now reduced its cost estimate to say that it is only $160 that families will be impacted by the cap and trade bill. I think that now CBO has now entered the realm of losing its credibility."
Translation: We want our garbage in, and we want your garbage out.
It hasn't been just the CBO's health care analyses causing rhetorical whiplash. It's also been the Republican's schizophrenic embrace/denouncing of all of the numbers, depending entirely on the subject matter. The CBO are delusional about the stimulus, but they're A-OK on Social Security. The CBO is full of crap on the extension of the upper income tax cuts, but they've just proved that the deficit is issue #1.
Everyone's entitled to their positions, naturally. But when you enthusiastically tout the same source that you're simultaneously branding as liars, either it's part of a larger, ongoing strategy to discredit the basic concept of the neutral observer, or it's insincere partisan gibberish. And it's pretty sad that option #2 would be the more ethical one.
Well, if I can address this particular issue briefly:
When scoring a *new* piece of legislation, the CBO depended on a series of predicted or speculative scenarios, some of which were laughable from the start. "Oh, you're going to cut $150 billion from Medicare. Oh, OK, then it's deficit-neutral." You can see the gap between fantasy and reality in the high-risk pools where participation has fallen short by 96%.
Social Security is a well-known quantity with fewer moving parts: demographics and payments in here - benefits to geezers flow out there. So if the CBO confirms what everybody, including the SS Trustees, have been saying for ages, it's to be believed.
How about when the SocSec trustees say that people are misunderstanding, or misrepresenting, the significance of the 2037 date?
Or when they say that the shortfall is proportionately modest and can be dealt with by minor adjustments to the program? (And the trustees' math has produced a higher shortfall than the CBO's estimate.)
Or when they note that the program's shortfall over the next 75 years is approximately the same amount as the federal cost of the Bush tax cuts (2011 onwards not included)?
Is that to be believed also, or does fiscal credibility ebb and flow like the tides?
5 comments:
Wait, does this mean it's okay to cite the CBO again?
Republicans and the CBO numbers are like Rachel and Ross on "Friends"... they're dating other people, but now they're a couple, whoops they're broken up, hooray they're back together!
Marcel - they weren't impugning the office in the health care "debates", they were asserting garbage-in-garbage-out, i.e., that unrealistic assumptions were forced on the CBO leading to inaccurate results.
(There is another secondary consistent criticism of the CBO using static scoring, but I'm 99% certaint that's not what you were referring to.)
And yet, some garbage smells wonderful!
Eric Cantor on the CBO health care estimate, June 16, 2009:
"I think the news yesterday from the CBO is the turning point in the healthcare debate so that we will be able to put some reason back into the discussion here and be able to produce for the middle-class families in this country. When CBO says, number one, we're going to be spending $1 trillion - and that is a down payment on the cost of this healthcare reform - it is troubling when we're trying to save money that we would be calling for that kind of expenditure. Number two, when CBO says that about a third of the uninsured is what will be insured under this bill, leaving two-thirds uninsured still without coverage, certainly doesn't reach the mark that we're trying to accomplish."
Eric Cantor on the revised CBO health care estimate, June 24, 2009:
"Today, now we are reading the reports that have come out this week that CBO has now reduced its cost estimate to say that it is only $160 that families will be impacted by the cap and trade bill. I think that now CBO has now entered the realm of losing its credibility."
Translation: We want our garbage in, and we want your garbage out.
It hasn't been just the CBO's health care analyses causing rhetorical whiplash. It's also been the Republican's schizophrenic embrace/denouncing of all of the numbers, depending entirely on the subject matter. The CBO are delusional about the stimulus, but they're A-OK on Social Security. The CBO is full of crap on the extension of the upper income tax cuts, but they've just proved that the deficit is issue #1.
Everyone's entitled to their positions, naturally. But when you enthusiastically tout the same source that you're simultaneously branding as liars, either it's part of a larger, ongoing strategy to discredit the basic concept of the neutral observer, or it's insincere partisan gibberish. And it's pretty sad that option #2 would be the more ethical one.
Well, if I can address this particular issue briefly:
When scoring a *new* piece of legislation, the CBO depended on a series of predicted or speculative scenarios, some of which were laughable from the start. "Oh, you're going to cut $150 billion from Medicare. Oh, OK, then it's deficit-neutral." You can see the gap between fantasy and reality in the high-risk pools where participation has fallen short by 96%.
Social Security is a well-known quantity with fewer moving parts: demographics and payments in here - benefits to geezers flow out there. So if the CBO confirms what everybody, including the SS Trustees, have been saying for ages, it's to be believed.
How about when the SocSec trustees say that people are misunderstanding, or misrepresenting, the significance of the 2037 date?
Or when they say that the shortfall is proportionately modest and can be dealt with by minor adjustments to the program? (And the trustees' math has produced a higher shortfall than the CBO's estimate.)
Or when they note that the program's shortfall over the next 75 years is approximately the same amount as the federal cost of the Bush tax cuts (2011 onwards not included)?
Is that to be believed also, or does fiscal credibility ebb and flow like the tides?
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