Former CBO Director slams the President’s budget

By Tom Quiner

Former Director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin

I have a love-hate affair with the Congressional Budget Office.

I appreciate their independence.  They beat up on Republicans and Democrats alike.

I think they sometime miss the mark in their projections, though, because they utilize static, rather than dynamic, economic projections.  In other words, they don’t acknowledge that tax increases (or decreases) might affect spending behavior and the amount of taxes the government takes in.

Let’s set aside that point for today.

Rather, let’s listen to what former Director of the CBO, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has to say about President Obama’s budget:

“At present the (publicly-held) debt-to-GDP ratio is still below 65 percent. In Obama’s budgets it is projected to reach 90 percent over the next ten years despite the facts that:

● The economy is assumed to grow robustly and return to full employment (thereby eliminating the biggest source of historic shortfalls), and

● Revenues are assumed to rise — due to repeal of the Bush cuts for the top two brackets and other factors — to levels approaching those present in 2001.

So why does Obama choose (and let’s face it, you can put anything in a budget, so it is achoice) to run a deficit of $1.2 trillion in 2021? Spending. Why does he choose to drive the federal budget into a debt spiral? Spending. Why are this nation’s growth, social safety net, and credit rating at risk? Spending.”

For the record, Mr. Holz-Eakin is no partisan hack. He is very critical of the prescription drug plan passed by a Republican Congress and signed by former President George W. Bush.

His take-away point for today is this: we’ve got a spending problem, not a tax problem. It is important for the blogosphere to hammer this point home because the mainstream media surely won’t.

It is imperative that the Tea Party Movement continue to keep both political parties accountable.