Republicans Are Stacking The Deck

A Washington Post editorial has taken me to task for calling the Congressional Budget Office “a Republican-orchestrated, Republican-run, Republican-dominated organization that can’t be relied upon as a bipartisan resource any longer.” I agree with the editorial that CBO is “one of the most valuable institutions in the government” and strongly support its mission to provide Congress with “dispassionate, non-partisan analysis on which to base budget decisions.” That is precisely why I am so troubled by what is happening to it.

For one who has observed firsthand the Republican “revolutionary” tactics over the past year, the GOP coup at CBO comes as no surprise. It is part of a systematic effort to politicize or undermine agencies charged with independently evaluating the impact of government policies on the American people. CBO, the Joint Tax Committee, the General Accounting Office, the bureaus of Labor Statistics and Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau all have been either politically infected or financially disabled by congressional Republicans.

Republicans have correctly calculated that an assault on these agencies will be met with a collective national yawn. But these watchdogs were established to focus a critical eye on government proposals.

The GOP budget proposed history’s largest transfer of income from the middle class to the wealthy. To hide this reality, Republicans are attempting to control and mute any criticism of their plans from independent analysts.

Consider the behavior of the once-impartial Joint Tax Committee, which has reversed its policies in a way that masks the impact of the Republican tax agenda. According to the GOP-controlled committee, cutting capital gains taxes - formerly acknowledged as a huge windfall for millionaires - is now made to appear on the books as a tax increase on the rich! “Up” is now “down,” thanks to GOP gimmickry.

Earlier this year, the Joint Tax Committee released estimates showing that a Democratic proposal to prevent wealthy Americans from avoiding taxes by renouncing their citizenship raised less revenue than a considerably more lenient Republican version of the proposal. Also, contrary to normal practice, the committee has utilized industry-sponsored studies in the formulation of its estimators.

The Republican manipulation of CBO presents the greatest danger of all. This unfortunate turn of events began last spring, with the unilateral Republican appointment of June O’Neill as CBO director - the first time a CBO chief had been selected without backing from both parties.

Next, the Republicans ordered CBO to factor in accounting tricks that would make their budget appear balanced. O’Neill admitted in a letter to me that if it were not for this device, their budget would produce a $40 billion deficit, not balance, in 2002. The result of this use of the agency: a seemingly CBO-blessed “balanced” budget plan, for which Republicans “awarded” themselves a $245 billion tax break.

It has also become more complicated to extract from CBO “distribution” charts that help explain the impact of policy changes. This is probably because those charts would show that Republicans intend to transfer vast amounts of income to the wealthiest Americans while asking everyone else to pick up the tab through cuts in areas such as Medicare, nursing home care, the environment and education.

The Post currently acknowledges that CBO’s economic forecasts are nothing more than “educated guesses” and that all economic forecasts are largely such. I agree. That is why the president and congressional Democrats insisted - and Republicans agreed - on a careful collaboration regarding these technical assumptions. We all approved an approach that allows CBO to “score” the final budget agreement after consultation with and input from private-sector economists and the administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

This is a politically fair and economically sound arrangement. After all, the Wall Street Journal says “the GOP should accept the Administration’s growth estimates. We especially do not think artificial numbers should get in the way of correct policies.” The prestigious Blue Chip Forecasters panel also “believes that OMB estimates of long range growth are more probable than the CBO’s.” Since CBO assumptions are extremely pessimistic by all accounts, it seems reasonable to Democrats that on a matter of such magnitude it would be wise to consider the opinions of the best minds in this complex field.

Republicans see it differently. They have chosen to ignore our agreement to collaborate on the economic and technical assumptions and have demanded that CBO produce a growth forecast up front, before a single policy is agreed upon. Never mind that it makes no sense to predict the sweeping economic impact of a budget deal before we know any of the actual details that will determine that impact.

The public deserves better than just those numbers that suit the needs of the party in power. Undermining and manipulating agencies that provide critical data corrodes public confidence in government. With public skepticism at an all-time high, I hope we can restore these agencies to the non-partisan tradition that commands the respect of the American people.

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