Joseph Lawler of the Washington Examiner reports on some interesting comments from the head of the Congressional Budget Office.
Congress’ official budget scorekeeper said Monday that it was up to members of Congress, not him, to decide whether to make “dynamic scoring” the norm for budget estimates.
Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, weighed in on the question of estimating tax changes at an appearance at the Brookings Institution Monday.
With Republicans set to take over both chambers of Congress in January, conservative lawmakers are considering overhauling the budget process to make official scores reflect the added tax revenue from economic growth that would come from cutting tax cuts. Republicans have said that such a dynamic score, rather than a static score that assumes no macroeconomic feedback from tax cuts, should be used as the baseline.
Part of that effort could involve replacing the scorekeepers, including Elmendorf, whose term expires in January.
Elmendorf said his office already provides dynamic scores, and that it’s up to members of Congress to decide whether or not to use them for the purposes of setting budgets and appropriating funds.
“Doing those kinds of analyses — again, for legislation that would plausibly have noticeable macroeconomic effects and when there’s time in the congressional process for us to do it — that’s fine, we’re doing that now,” Elmendorf said. As examples, he pointed to recent analyses of Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, last year’s Senate bill on immigration reform, and outgoing Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s tax-reform proposal. …
… “The question for the members of Congress is how they want to use that information,” Elmendorf said. “And that’s really up to them to decide what role they want to give these estimated macroeconomic effects in their feedback to the budget when they consider legislation.”
