Cooking The Numbers

Posted by | January 21, 2015 08:30 | Filed under: Contributors Opinion Politics Stuart Shapiro Top Stories

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One of the first things Republicans did upon taking control of Congress was requiring the Congressional Budget Office to use “dynamic scoring” when assessing tax cuts (but not spending increases).  My latest column for The Hill explores this cynical move:

At best, the change to dynamic scoring will affect a very small number of bills each year. At worst, it will demean the reputation of an excellent institution as politicians use the resulting numbers to score political points. Static scoring is a humble approach to public policy analysis. It acknowledges that there are limits to what we can predict. The implementation of dynamic scoring (particularly in the one-sided manner in which it has been done) ignores those limits and instructs CBO to make predictions in areas where there is great uncertainty. Republicans have done this fully aware that when the predictions are made, the uncertainty will be ignored, and they will have powerful numbers to use in political battles.

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Copyright 2015 Liberaland
By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.

18 responses to Cooking The Numbers

  1. edmeyer_able January 21st, 2015 at 08:37

    Republicans will always obfuscate when they have the chance, today om morning joe Reince Pribus could not answer a simple question as to why there were two different versions of their response. One in Spanish that mentioned immigration reform and one in English that omitted it. What are they trying to hide from their base?

    • Dwendt44 January 21st, 2015 at 12:08

      Two faced is normal operating procedure for the GOP.

      • edmeyer_able January 21st, 2015 at 12:09

        They call it “plausible deniability”.

        • Dwendt44 January 21st, 2015 at 12:56

          Make that “probable deniability’.

          • John_St_John January 22nd, 2015 at 11:47

            Definite Deniability.Not that it will be valid, but they will try.

    • rg9rts January 21st, 2015 at 13:51

      Love that word…reminds me of Click and Clack

  2. edmeyer_able January 21st, 2015 at 09:37

    Republicans will always obfuscate when they have the chance, today on morning joe Reince Pribus could not answer a simple question as to why there were two different versions of their response. One in Spanish that mentioned immigration reform and one in English that omitted it. What are they trying to hide from their base?

    • Dwendt44 January 21st, 2015 at 13:08

      Two faced is normal operating procedure for the GOP.

      • edmeyer_able January 21st, 2015 at 13:09

        They call it “plausible deniability”.

        • Dwendt44 January 21st, 2015 at 13:56

          Make that “probable deniability’.

          • John_St_John January 22nd, 2015 at 12:47

            Definite Deniability.Not that it will be valid, but they will try.

    • rg9rts January 21st, 2015 at 14:51

      Love that word…reminds me of Click and Clack

  3. granpa.usthai January 21st, 2015 at 09:47

    yep.

    GW’s boys all over again.

  4. granpa.usthai January 21st, 2015 at 10:47

    yep.

    GW’s boys all over again.

  5. rg9rts January 21st, 2015 at 13:50

    They would fudge the numbers too??? Nooooooooo

  6. rg9rts January 21st, 2015 at 14:50

    They would fudge the numbers too??? Nooooooooo

  7. Warman1138 February 3rd, 2015 at 05:34

    2+2=5

  8. Warman1138 February 3rd, 2015 at 06:34

    2+2=5

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