Must-Read: Larry Summers: When the best umps blow a call
Must-Read: I think Larry Summers gets this wrong. Under Rivlin, Reischauer, Orszag, and Elmendorf the CBO was a national treasure. Otherwise… Not so much. Hit and miss.
Remember June O’Neill talking about how many people would lose their jobs from health care reform, and never once telling the reporters she briefed that in her models people hadn’t “lost” their jobs, they quit jobs they did not want to have and were made happier thereby?
And now we have an assumed-but-hidden 2%/year real rate of return on government infrastructure investment driving an analysis:
: When the best umps blow a call: “The Congressional Budget Office is an American national treasure…
…Without the impartial objectivity it brings to the budget process, our country would make much worse policy. Baseball without an umpire would be a very different game, and similarly the making of budget policy without CBO would be a very different and inferior activity. However, even the best umps occasionally blow a call, and I am afraid that is what CBO has done in its recent infrastructure report…