Opinion Editorial | |
| Wednesday, November 4, 1998 | |
A Different Role For The Congressional Budget Office |
Last week, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director June O'Neill announced that she would step down next year. In truth, her four-year term expires on January 3 and she had not the slightest chance of reappointment. Congressional Republican leaders, especially in the House, have been furious with her for some time. Indeed, many would have fired her long ago if they could have. O'Neill's departure gives them a new opportunity to fix a serious impediment to their agenda. One problem Republican leaders should now address is the basic role of the CBO in the legislative process. Established in 1974 as the congressional counterpart of the president's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), CBO has never played quite the same role. OMB is far more than just the administration's budget numbers cruncher; it is really its central domestic policymaking agency. It has its fingers deep in every policy pie in government. CBO, by contrast, stands aloof from the policymaking process; a backseat driver to OMB's driver. While OMB revels in its political status, CBO has always seemed embarrassed by it. Its staff tend to act as if they are working for some Ivory Tower institution that never muddies its shoes in the dirty business of politics, rather than an agency of our most political institution of government. Indeed, CBO often publishes reports that appear directed primarily toward an academic audience, with little practical value to Congress. This sense of being apart from politics explains much of O'Neill's failure at CBO. As a former academic economist from Baruch College in New York (to which she is returning), she was really not cut out for the rough-and-tumble world of congressional politics. O'Neill was easily bullied by committee chairman intent on forcing the right budget score from CBO, she was uneasy dealing with the press, and made no effort to be an ally of the Republican leadership in their many battles with the Clinton Administration. By contrast, Clinton's OMB directors felt no such compunctions. In my view, Congressional leaders should seek to make CBO more like OMB, in the sense of more fully integrating it into the day-to-day political process. While such a move will inevitably be attacked as politicizing CBO, the long-term payoff will more than compensate. This means explicitly acknowledging that CBO is a political institution that answers directly to the leadership in Congress. Thus if there is a change in party control of Congress we should automatically expect a reorientation of the leadership at the CBO at least down to the assistant director level, as is the case at OMB when there is a change in administration. Historically, this has not been the case, with most senior staff other than the director kept on no matter what party controls Congress. Unfortunately for Republicans, almost all of the CBO staff were hired during Democratic control. Indeed, many of them have been there since its founding, hired by the first director, Alice Rivlin, who went on to become Bill Clinton's OMB director. As objective as they may think they are, they still reflect a liberal Democratic worldview that inevitably biases their analyses in ways inimicable to a conservative Republican agenda. If nothing else, the new director must be given a mandate to clean house and bring in new blood. Unfortunately, there is no obvious candidate to replace Mrs. O'Neill who is likely to achieve this goal. At a minimum, it is important that Republican leaders should give much more thought to the CBO director this time than they seem to have given to it four years ago. Source: Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, November 4, 1998. Home | Support Us | All Issues | Social Security Debate Central | Contact Us |