CBO congress budget off / research serv

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Fox contributor Newt Gingrich organizes MAGA attacks against Congressional Budget Office}:

05/21/25

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is blaming what he calls “young men” playing video games instead of working, as he defends Republicans’ plan to gut Medicaid—slashing what Democrats say is $880 billion from the vital health program that provides medical care to one in five Americans.

“No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who’s duly owed — what we’ve talked about is returning work requirements, so, for example, you don’t have able-bodied young men on a program that’s designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled,” said the Speaker. Johnson’s own Louisiana district has a disproportionately high rate of Americans on the life-saving program: CBS News this week reported Medicaid is a “lifeline” for people in his district.

Johnson blamed what he suggested is a large number of male gamers on Medicaid for “draining resources.”

“So if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money, and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day,” he again declared.

IFrame Content

“We have a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid. Just one tiny example. The estimate is $51 billion a year, in Medicaid is lost to fraud. That’s unconscionable,” the Louisiana GOP lawmaker claimed.

But rather than target professionals who may be bilking the system, or other factors including paperwork errors, Johnson has chosen to repeatedly target what he claims are “29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games.”

The nonpartisan health policy organization KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) reported in February that “data show most Medicaid adults are working or face barriers to work. Many Medicaid adults who are working low-wage jobs are employed by small firms and in industries that have low employer-sponsored insurance offer rates.”

KFF also reports that the vast majority of adult Medicaid recipients under the age of retirement (65) are already working, with no work requirement.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding a work requirement would only serve as a barrier to Medicaid participation, and therefore spending, but would not increase the employment levels for otherwise eligible recipients.

“In Arkansas,” KFF reports, “implementing Medicaid work requirements resulted in more than 18,000 people losing coverage.”

Adding work requirements also increases monitoring and implementation costs at the state level.

Critics blasted Johnson.

“Of course, nothing says ‘dignity’ like ripping healthcare away from poor people based on outdated, classist stereotypes,” wrote Wall Street investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze. “Young men on Medicaid aren’t ‘playing video games all day,’ they’re often underpaid, overworked, or struggling in a rigged economy. This is just MAGA cruelty dressed up as moral judgment.”

Annie Shoup of the nonprofit Protect Our Care wrote: “We know that people on Medicaid who are able to work already do. This will only hurt people and prevent them from getting the health care they deserve, including caregivers who are staying at home caring for family members.”

The organization Social Security Works added, “Medicaid pays for two-thirds of nursing home care in America. That’s what Mike Johnson wants to rip away from seniors and people with disabilities.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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new government report finds Trump’s trade war is hurting American families’ incomes

Igor Derysh / Salon

President Donald Trump’s trade war is projected to reduce the average family’s real income by $1,277, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO, a nonpartisan congressional…

Garbage’ GOP tax cuts didn’t benefit the economy — according to the Congressional Research Service

"It's done nothing to raise wages and flown right into…

https://www.dcreport.org/2018/07/20/the-federal-deficit-mulvaney-says-the-congressional-budget-office-was-right-after-all/

The Federal Deficit: Mulvaney Says The Congressional Budget Office Was Right After All CBO Comes In Lower Than The White House—Still, Both Numbers Are Really, Really Big

...Since Becoming Trump’s Office Of Management And Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney Has Viciously Attacked The Congressional Budget Office As A Highly Partisan And Substantively Inept Organization. He Has Repeatedly Questioned Its Economic Assumptions, Its Budget Analyses And The Politics Of Its Analysts.

[Chart]

CBO Said In Its Long-Term Budget Outlook Report Released Last Month That The 2018 Deficit Will Be $793 Billion; OMB Said In Its Just-Released Mid-Session Review Of The President’s Budget That It Will Be $890 Billion. For 2019, CBO Said The Deficit Will Be $973 Billion While OMB Said It Will Be $1.085 Trillion.For 2020, CBO Said $1.003 Trillion Compared To OMB’s $1.076 Trillion.And That Makes It More Than A Little Newsworthy That OMB, The Federal Agency Mulvaney Himself Directs And In His Mind Is A Paragon Of Bipartisanship And Objectivity, Released A Report Last Friday That Not Only Shows That CBO’s Numbers Were Substantively Good, It Also Shows That The Organization Mulvaney Had Attacked For Being Too Partisan Was More Optimistic About Where The Federal Deficit Is Headed The Next Few Years Than Trump’s Own Budget Director.

It’s Important To Note That OMB’s Numbers Are Based On What We Already Know Is A Complete Myth: That The Spending Cuts Included In The Trump Fiscal 2019 Budget Sent To Congress Earlier This Year Will Be Enacted. For The Second Year In A Row, The GOP Congress Has Shown No Interest Whatsoever In Adopting The Spending Cuts The President Proposed.

As A Result, The Disparity Between CBO’s Relatively Optimistic Deficit Estimates And OMB’s Comparatively Pessimistic Projections Is Most Likely To Get Larger.

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney Owes The Congressional Budget Office A Huge Apology.

To Be Fair, CBO And OMB Diverge In The Opposite Direction From 2022 Through 2028. But, Also To Be Fair, Everyone’s Budget Forecast Beyond Three Years Is Far More Guesswork Than Substantive Analysis Given That Its Multiple Congressional And Presidential Elections And Countless Natural And Man-Made Disasters Will Occur, And Long-Term Forecasts Of How Fast The Economy Will Grow (Or Not) Are Often Just Wishful Thinking Or Straight-Line Extrapolations.

In The Meantime, However, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney Owes The Congressional Budget Office A Huge Apology.

Stan Collender Is One Of The Leading Experts On The Federal Budget, Federal Spending And Revenues, The Deficit, The National Debt And The Congressional Budget Process. He Blogs Thebudgetguy

Yesterday, Doug Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Senate energy committee about the “comparatively modest” cost of a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon pollution. The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal blared “Congressional Budget Chief Says Climate Bill Would Cost Jobs” and “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, CBO Chief Says.” Conservatives leapt on the reports to cheer the “end” of “cap-and-tax.”

Of course, Elmendorf’s testimony is nothing new. Elmendorf warned that jobs in the fossil fuel industry would be lost, and that overall GDP growth would be slowed by less than one percent by 2020. No one is arguing that there won’t be a shift from pollution-based industries to clean-energy industries. But doing so will create millions more jobs than are lost, as energy companies invest in American workers instead of foreign oil and mountaintop removal. The effect on GDP is within the margin of error of future estimates of growth. Even pessimistic studies by the National Association of Manufacturers find that U.S. GDP will increase by $9 trillion with limits on carbon pollution.

What upset me, however, was the portion of Elmendorf’s testimony that was not reported. Although he recognized that his estimates do not take into account the economic impacts of climate change, he testified that the changes that scientists call “catastrophic” would be barely noticeable in the U.S. economy:

Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate. Moreover, researchers generally expect the growth in the U.S. economy over the coming century to be concentrated in sectors — such as information technology and medical care — that are relatively insulated from climate effects. Damages are therefore likely to be a smaller share of the future economy than they would be if they occurred today. As a consequence, a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7° Fahrenheit (F) by 2100. [Dale W. Jorgenson et al., 2004]

Elmendorf goes on to cite Nordhaus & Boyer (2000) to claim “the risk of catastrophic outcomes associated with about 11°F of warming by 2100″ gives a projected “loss equivalent to about 5 percent of U.S. output and, because of substantially larger losses in a number of other countries, a loss of about 10 percent of global output.” (By way of comparison, US GDP collapsed by nearly 50 percent during the Great Depression.)

This is frighteningly nonsensical. The CBO is arguing that the collapse of the national electricity grid, water supply, food system, and physical infrastructure from heat waves, desertification, disease outbreaks, wildfires, floods, and catastrophic storms would barely affect the national economy. In fact, seven to 11° F (4 to 6°C) warming would lead to :{unimaginable changes in our planet:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: by 2100:

– One to three billion people around the world exposed to “increased water stress” (aka drought)

– More than 40 percent of the world’s species go extinct

– Widespread coral reef mortality

– Terrestrial biosphere becomes a net carbon source

– Productivity of cereal grains decreases in low, mid, and high latitudes

– Sea level rise of 0.6 – 1.3 meters (2 to 4 feet)

– About 35 percent of global coastal wetlands are lost

– Twenty percent of world’s population exposed to increased floods

– About 20 percent of arable land disappears (same amount becomes arable in previously frozen north)

– Arctic warms by 27°F

The effects in the United States would be similarly disastrous:

— heat waves of greater than 90° six months of the year in Texas, Florida, Arizona, southern California

– 5-month heat waves in California interior, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina

– 4-month heat waves in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina

– 4-month heat waves greater than 100° in Texas, Arizona, southern California

– 3-month heat waves greater than 100° in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, California interior

– 2 to 3-month heat waves everywhere in US except New England, northern Great Lakes, and the mountains, Pacific NW coast

– 1 to 2 months of greater than 100° everywhere except New York-New England, northern Great Lakes, mountains, Pacific NW coast

– 40 percent less precipitation in the Southwest

– Dust Bowl returns to Midwest

– Smog levels throughout summer above 10 ppb all across country

– Pollen count doubles again to four times pre-industrial levels

– Doubling of large wildfires in the West, as aspen and lodgepole pine disappear completely

– Tripling of coastal damage from storms

– Inundation of 10,000 square miles of U.S. land, including 25 to 80 percent of coastal wetlands

Texas and California, our top agricultural states, are already suffering from unprecedented heat and drought. Under 7 to 11°F warming, they would no longer be able to support agriculture. Corn crops start failing at above 90 degree weather, and soybean fails above 100 degrees. There would be no snow, maple, or cranberry industries in New England. The economists’ argument is that since the U.S. agriculture industry only represents about three percent of GDP, its total devastation would be hardly noticeable.

The above figures are actually misleading, because these are just the effects estimated under 4°C warming, not the even more unimaginable 6°C. Scientists are now warning that our current emissions levels may lead to 4°C warming by the 2070s.

It should also be noted that this kind of catastrophic warming would guarantee the long-term collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctica ice sheets, leading to sea level rise of over 12 meters (39 feet) in about 300 to 1000 years. But hey, I guess economists would argue that would spur growth in the floating-city industries.

Tags:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/10/15/172973/cbo-killer-economics/

http://climatechange.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin//profiler?key=douglas_elmendorf&pt=2

Doug Elmendorf	Doug Elmendorf


Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government	Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government
Incumbent	Incumbent
Assumed office January 1, 2016	Assumed office January 1, 2016
Preceded by	David T. Ellwood
Director of the Congressional Budget Office	Director of the Congressional Budget Office
In office January 22, 2009 – March 31, 2015	In office January 22, 2009 – March 31, 2015
Preceded by	Robert A. Sunshine (Acting)
Succeeded by	Keith Hall
Personal details	Personal details
Born	Douglas William Elmendorf April 16, 1962 (age 56) Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	Princeton University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Academic career	Academic career

Doctoral advisor	Martin Feldstein

Douglas William Elmendorf (born April 16, 1962)^[1] is an American economist who is the Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009 to 2015.^[2] He was a Brookings Institution senior fellow from 2007 to 2009, and briefly in 2015 following his time at the CBO, and was a director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.^[3]

Biography

Education

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Elmendorf attended the Poughkeepsie Day School and graduated from Spackenkill High School.^[4][5] He spent his early career as an academic and educator. He went to Princeton University as an undergraduate, studying economics, and then headed to Harvard University to obtain his master's and Ph.D. in the same subject. After graduating in 1989, he stayed at Harvard for four academic years as an assistant professor, working closely with economics professor Martin Feldstein, the director of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, to teach introductory economics classes.

Career

In 1993, Elmendorf moved to public life, working for the Congressional Budget Office for the first time. He spent a year as an associate analyst before joining full-time in 1994 as a principal analyst where Elmendorf focused on health-care issues and the economic effects of budget deficits. Working under Director Robert D. Reischauer, Elmendorf worked on a team that concluded President Bill Clinton's health reform package would cost much more than originally thought. This analysis helped cripple Clinton's attempt to reform health care.^[6]

Elmendorf only stayed a year at the CBO as a principal analyst before heading to the Federal Reserve Board as an economist while Alan Greenspan headed it. In 1998, his travels through the financial departments of the federal government continued, as Elmendorf moved to the Council of Economic Advisers, working as a senior economist under Director Janet Yellen. After staying at the CEA for a year, Elmendorf then joined the United States Treasury Department as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, working under Clinton Treasury Secretary of the United States Lawrence Summers. When George W. Bush took office, Elmendorf moved back to the Fed as a senior economist and in 2002, he got a promotion to chief of the macroeconomics analysis team, leading a group of 30 economists and researchers as they forecasted inflation rates and labor markets.^[7]

In 2007, Elmendorf began working for the well-known economic think-tank the Brookings Institution, co-editing the twice-yearly publication "Brookings Papers on Economic Activity."^[7] In 2008, Jason Furman, the director of the Brookings' group known as the Hamilton Project left to join the Obama campaign. Elmendorf replaced him as director of the Project, a forum for economic policy discussion that was created by Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin — an advocate of free trade and a small deficit.^[8]

Testifying before the House Budget Committee in June 2011 Director Elmendorf said that "uncertainty about federal policy is diminishing household and business spending and that uncertainty covers a whole set of policies: It covers tax policy, it covers regulatory policy and it covers health policy." He noted that New figures released 30 June 2011 by the CBO show debt rising to 190 percent of the gross domestic product by 2035. Economists have warned that exceeding 90 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is a prescription for a debt crisis. "The current level of debt is reducing our output, our incomes relative to what would be the case if we had a lower level of debt, leaving aside the effects of this particular recession, which complicate that," Elmendorf said. As of 2011 debt to GDP levels are 70%.^[9]

In August 2011 the CBO noted a dismal outlook of the nation's budget and economy, crystallizing the challenges Congress faces this fall in reducing deficits and increasing employment. CBO projects a $1.28 trillion deficit for the fiscal year, and total deficits over the next 10 years of $3.5 trillion. Gross federal debt is expected to rise from $14.8 trillion this year to $21.3 trillion in 2021, CBO said. "A great deal of the pain of this economic downturn still lies ahead of us," Director Elmendorf said at a Wednesday press conference after the report's release. He said the debt-ceiling deal "makes a real difference, so I guess that's good news." He then added: "I think the challenges that remain are very large."^[10]

In June 2015, Harvard University President Drew Faust announced that Elmendorf would succeed David T. Ellwood as Dean at Harvard Kennedy School. "Doug Elmendorf is an outstanding public servant, an admired mentor and teacher, and a distinguished economist deeply immersed in the interplay of research and policy — an experienced leader in government who embodies the Harvard Kennedy School's commitment to joining scholarship, education, and practice to serve the public good," Faust said in a press release.^[11] Elmendorf assumed office in January 2016.