Frustrated with high cost estimates for health care reform, some Democratic leaders sound ready to turn to a time-honored Washington tradition to push them down: fudge the numbers.
On Thursday, one Senate Democrat managing health care reform legislation, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), and the Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), questioned the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary estimates of parts of two reform plans, each put at more than $1 trillion over 10 years. The higher-than-expected projections have given Republican critics new ammunition to attack them -- and created new hurdles for supporters.
“There is no denying that the CBO numbers came as somewhat of a surprise to all us,” one Senate Democratic leadership aide told FOX News on Wednesday. “We had no idea they would be that high. There is a several-hundred billion difference between the numbers CBO came up with and what was expected.”
The aide added that while Democrats were reviewing “policy adjustments” to possibly reduce the cost of a plan, “we are, of course, examining CBO’s assumptions.”
HOUSE DEMS HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL
Public health care plan, exchangesIndividual business mandates2% tax for uninsured individuals8% payroll tax for uninsured businessesDodd was more blunt. He is chairing the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the absence of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is fighting brain cancer.
“Their numbers are helpful, but I'm not going to write a bill only because it has to pass some unnamed people down at CBO,” Dodd said at a press briefing. “Others may decide that's the end all. I don't… The idea that everything gets deferred to CBO or gives them the power to cancel ideas in our bill... I've never heard of that idea before being raised on a legitimate and important piece of legislation like this.”
At the end of the committee hearing Thursday, Dodd announced that members would meet with CBO officials behind closed doors on Monday “so that we can talk to these folks about the numbers.”
In her weekly press briefing, Pelosi said, “You name any positive investment that we make, that we know reduces the cost, brings money to the Treasury... but [it is] never scored positively by the CBO…It’s frustrating.”
The comments could be intended to pressure CBO to revise its estimates, known in budget circles as “scoring.” They also could signal that some Democratic leaders are considering a procedurally easy way to reduce the costs: discard the CBO’s estimates in favor of a more sympathetic analysis. Among other maneuvers, they could turn to the President’s Office of Management and Budget for more optimistic estimates.
“In arithmetic disputes, CBO often takes the more cautious position, estimating somewhat lower economic growth and higher outlays,” wrote Allen Schick, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a book on the federal budget. “Consequently, Congress sometimes finds itself at a disadvantage using CBO numbers. On occasion, therefore, Congress has directed CBO to use OMB assumptions in scoring legislation. The practice [is] known as ‘direct scoring.’
“There’s ample precedent for this,” said budget expert Stanley Collender of Qorvis Communications LLC in Washington, D.C., adding that for years, politicians on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have picked the best numbers to advance policy proposals. “It’s up to Congress to decide what numbers it’s going to use at anytime. They can’t delegate that to an agency.”
But dismissing CBO’s analysis could also open Democrats to new attacks by reform critics on the credibility of the process.
“Obviously, there are huge political implications in this stuff,” Collender said.
The CBO is supposed to be a nonpartisan arbiter of cost estimates of policy proposals, though Congress -- and thus the party that controls it -- picks its director. In January, Democrats selected Douglas Elmendorf, a Harvard economist and veteran Washington budget analyst, as the new CBO head.
In Congressional testimony in March, Elmendorf talked about the difficulty in making projections in health-care reform.
“Savings from some initiatives may not materialize because incentives to reduce costs are lacking,” he said. “In some cases, estimating the budgetary effects of a proposal is hampered by limited evidence.”
At the CBO’s Web site, he has been blogging extensively about his agency’s analysis.
“When CBO evaluates policies, the agency aims to reflect the middle of the range of expert opinion about likely outcomes,” Elmendorf wrote this week. “For any particular policy option, CBO carefully reviews the relevant empirical evidence and examines the incentives that would be created to control costs and the factors that might limit the success of those incentives.”
