It’s a Nobel Laureate’s Prerogative to Change His Mind
Paul Krugman has often touted the wonders of the information coming out of the Congressional Budge Office (CBO). This was especially true during the health care bill and stimulus debates. James Taranto hits some of the highlights.
“The Congressional Budget Office has looked at the future of American health insurance, and it works. . . . Last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news–which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis–was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care.”–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 6, 2009 “Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded, the proposed legislation would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. And by giving us a chance, finally, to rein in the ever-growing spending of Medicare, it would greatly improve our long-run fiscal prospects.”–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2009 “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2050 the emissions limits in recent proposed legislation would reduce real G.D.P. by between 1 percent and 3.5 percent from what it would otherwise have been. If we split the difference, that says that emissions limits would slow the economy’s annual growth over the next 40 years by around one-twentieth of a percentage point–from 2.37 percent to 2.32 percent. That’s not much.”–Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 7, 2009 “Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the roadmap [for cutting Medicare costs, offered by Rep. Paul Ryan], offers a translation: ‘Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.’ In short, there would be Medicare cuts.”–Krugman, New York Times, Feb. 12, 2010 “And it gets better as we go further into the future: the Congressional Budget Office has just concluded, in a new report, that the arithmetic of reform [ObamaCare] will look better in its second decade than it did in its first.”–Krugman, New York Times, March 12, 2010 “As Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, recently put it, ‘There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus today, while the unemployment rate is high and many factories and offices are underused, and imposing fiscal restraint several years from now, when output and employment will probably be close to their potential.’ “–Krugman, New York Times, July 2, 2010 “That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus.”–Krugman, New York Times, July 5, 2010
But as soon as a Republican starts to use CBO numbers to show how his plan for overhauling federal spending and taxes, well suddenly it is simplicity itself to game the system.
“What you need to realize is that the CBO is the servant of members of Congress, which means that if a Congressman asks it to analyze a plan under certain assumptions, it will do just that–no matter how unrealistic the assumptions may be.”–Krugman, NYTimes.com, Aug. 6, 2010
This bit of information would have been good to give to his readers back in the day. You know, those readers who take everything he says at face value.
Filed under: Doug • Economics & Taxes • Liberal
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CBO used to do two kinds of analyses, one required by law or by the Rules of the House or the Rules of the Senate on certain bills and types of bills that have budget impact, and the other at the request of any Member of Congress.
For the first type, the assumptions if any are clear, and the analyses can be relied on as free of taint.
For the second, it’s useful to know what assumptions the Member asked be made — and generally that is available in the transmission letter from CBO to the Member. A key sign that the Member is playing politics is when that transmission letter is not attached.
Similar rules apply for studies by the former General Accounting Office, now General Accountability Office. Similar rules apply for studies by the research gurus (literally) who staff the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.
So, the question one should ask is, what were the rules of the study.
Krugman could make those statements about the CBO which appear to be contradictory, but which are accurate in both cases, when he makes them.
Nuance doesn’t do well when you’ve got your knives out for anything that smacks of “liberal,” whether true or not. That’s why the public is much better served by those dedicated to seeking the facts regardless who gets miffed, or gored, by them.
Oh, and: Laureate
Except Krugman doesn’t specify any of that. He just proclaims it good when it’s a program he likes, and bad otherwise. In poo-pooing the CBO numbers for Ryan’s proposal, he makes a blanket statement. In fact, he generally makes blanket statements on how much we should trust CBO numbers. So he’s doing no one any favors. So he’s missing a bit of nuance himself, when his knives are out for anything that smacks of “conservative”.
And I thought that spelling looked nutty, but my spell checker gave me other options that looked just as wrong, so I went with it. Thanks for the correction.