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The Congressional Budget Office: “It’s Complicated!”

By Kate Pickert | @katepickert | September 22, 2009 | +

The first day of the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform markup started around 9 a.m. and wrapped up at 10 p.m. Most of the day was spent on opening statements from committee members. But after that was done, Chairman Max Baucus moved on to questions for Congressional Budget Director Doug Elmendorf.

Baucus is trying to move fast on the bill, hoping for a committee vote on it by week’s end. That goal alone may prove challenging – the committee barely got to a few of the approximately 500 amendments offered by members before the first day of markup ended. But even if the committee can get a vote on the bill by Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will then have to reconcile the Baucus bill with the health reform bill from the Senate’s HELP Committee and then bring the resulting legislation to the floor for a full vote. Reid too wants this to happen quickly, but the CBO, the non-partisan government entity that determines the impact of legislation on the federal budget, may have thrown a wrench into the short timeline imagined by Democrats.

Amendments to the Baucus bill were filed by 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 18 and on Tuesday the chairman released a modified bill that incorporated some of those amendments, including some that affect revenues and spending levels. As I explained in an earlier post, the new Baucus bill increases affordability, lowers the excise tax on Americans who don’t get insurance, and gives states more money to pay for Medicaid, among other provisions.

But CBO Director Elmendorf and his staff appeared before the committee Tuesday to explain his analysis of the original Baucus bill, not the modified version. This seemed not to matter to committee members, who peppered Elmendorf with questions about how much the new bill and their amendments would cost. Several times, Elmendorf said he couldn’t answer questions because CBO hadn’t had time to analyze the new amendments. CBO has been working non-stop to analyze Baucus’s proposals and the amendments, but can only do so much so fast, said Elmendorf, who estimated his office could offer a preliminary estimate of a new version of the bill in a few days but would need around two weeks for a formal assessment.

This led to probably the most tension-filled moment of the afternoon, when Baucus asked, “We have to cool our heels for two or three weeks?” He then forcefully asked Elmendorf to “get us out of this box” and said “we can’t operate this way,” calling the two-week estimate “unacceptable.” Elmendorf seemed ruffled and said, “I assure you Senator we will be working as fast as we can,” but “that process invariably takes more time than people like me and you guess it will up front.”

The Finance Committee could vote on a bill without a formal assessment from CBO, but it could be politically risky for Baucus – Republicans will no doubt use the lack of a formal CBO analysis as fodder to criticize the speed at which Baucus is moving. All of this means the health reform legislative process is going to take longer than Democrats would like. Republicans, on the other hand, seized on this CBO timing bombshell as more proof Baucus is “rushing” the bill. (This was a theme throughout the day, especially in Republican opening statements.) Later in Tuesday’s session, Republican Senator Orin Hatch said, “What’s bothering me about this whole exercise is there’s such a rush to get things done with one-sixth of the United States economy…[the bill] has to be scored so at least we know what we’re doing.”

As the public area in the hearing room thinned out and staffers sitting behind senators started to look weary, Hatch and Baucus tussled when the chairman tried to cut off Hatch’s questioning of CBO staffers. The two began talking over each other, with Baucus eager to move on from CBO analysis to the hundreds of amendments filed. Hatch said, “I don’t want to clog or be obnoxious about this…but I’ve got plenty of questions that I think are legitimate.” Baucus insisted he wanted to get some amendments done before the hearing wrapped up, offering Hatch the chance to question CBO staffers after that. “I’ll stay here all night while you ask your questions,” said Baucus. Hatch eventually relented, but not before protesting strongly and urging Baucus to allow ample time for questions and debate as the committee moves forward to more amendments tomorrow.

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  • destor23

    So… on one hand Hatch thinks Baucus needs to give the CBO time to do a formal review of the new bill and on the other he wants to question the CBO now even though the formal review isn’t done? Okay.

    And there are hundreds of ammendments to offer and every one could potentially demand a new CBO estimate. So I guess, what, we can never pass anything ever?

    Hatch is just trying to delay things, of course. But come on, this is an old issue by this point. The time for CBO analysis has long since passed.

  • stuartzechman

    Kate Pickert:

    Reid too wants this to happen quickly, but the CBO, the non-partisan government entity that determines the impact of legislation on the federal budget, may have thrown a wrench into the short timeline imagined by Democrats.

    Is it really possible that all of the Senators and their staffers and aides were truly unaware of this possibility?
    .
    Did Max Baucus really not know beforehand that the CBO’s response would be something like ““I assure you Senator we will be working as fast as we can,” but “that process invariably takes more time than people like me and you guess it will up front.””
    .
    He had no idea whatsoever that 500+ amendments to a Finance Committee bill in which Medicaid would be expanded, tens of millions of subsidies given out to insurers, and Medicare Advantage redrawn would require another CBO score of its effect on the Federal budget?
    .
    Nobody who worked for Max Baucus or anyone on the Finance Committee –or anyone in Congress, for that matter– had the faintest clue that this would be the likely situation? Noone knew?
    .
    For the longtime Chairman of the Finance Committee, this was really a “CBO timing bombshell“?

    Is that credible, Kate Pickert?

  • homerhk

    stuart you see conspiracies everywhere. Some of the amendments should be pretty easy to score and the idea that it will take 2-3 weeks to do is fairly ridiculous given how quick they were to score the chairman’s mark some few days after it was released.

  • stuartzechman

    How do you know any of that?

  • homerhk

    Well, I don’t know all that. But I do know this: many of the amendments already incorporated are merely changes in figures in the context of structures already scored. The maths on this would be fairly straightforward I think basically changing the data points that they used to come up with the first scoring, which as I said they managed to do relatively quickly.

    *

    When you talk about 500+ amendments you also have to recognise that some if not most of those amendments are not going to be taken up (Hatch’s one regarding states with a U, for example), some of them are not going to have any effect on the monetary aspects of the bill (changing “fees” to “taxes”?) etc. So, given all that, I can confidently say that it would have been reasonable for Baucus to assume that it would not take a further 2-3 weeks to score any further amends.

    *

    But, regardless of all of that, what are you trying to say? That this is all some dastardly ploy to delay reform again? I just don’t get it, sorry.

  • carotexas1

    homerhk, you need to go to CSPAN and watch the afternoon session and see what the CBO said.
    Baucus cannot get Snow’s vote without a final score.

  • homerhk

    Caro,

    haven’t been able to watch – what did they say?

    I understand that Baucus can’t get Snowe’s vote without scoring, I was just responding to SZ’s comments which appear to suggest that this was all some thought out ploy to delay the bill. My point was that I didn’t think that it was obvious that CBO would need a further 2-3 weeks to do that; what was CBO’s justification for that extended timeline?

  • plukasiak

    The time for CBO analysis has long since passed.
    _
    This is just pig ignorant. Baucus didn’t even provide the CBO with his proposal until about a week ago, and then revised it the day before the markup. Moreover, most of the “Baucus bill” isn’t even in “legislative language”, and that language is necessary for the CBO to do an accurate analysis.
    _
    Hatch (and the GOP) are perfectly correct to want to see the CBO estimates on the bill — the problem is Baucus, who after wasting nine months in failed ‘negotiation’ behind closed doors with wingnuts, Conservadems, and health care parasites, now expects the entire committee to roll over and pass his entirely inadequate proposal.
    _
    My only question is “why the rush”?

  • plukasiak

    Good point, stuart.
    _
    Obviously, the chair of the Finance Committee is fully aware of how long CBO analysis takes — so the real question that Pickert should be asking is “why the Kabuki?”.
    _
    And the real question we should be asking is “Why did Time assign someone who knows far less than we do about this subject to cover the mark-up?”

  • carotexas1

    homerhk, Elmendorff said he could give quick scores off the original mark, but it would take two weeks to give a final one on the final bill with the legislative language.

  • plukasiak

    My point was that I didn’t think that it was obvious that CBO would need a further 2-3 weeks to do that; what was CBO’s justification for that extended timeline?
    _
    1) until the CBO knows what the final (amended) bill looks like, it cannot provide anything close to an accurate estimate of how it impacts the budget because provisions are interrelated. For example, Cantwell’s proposal to “incentivize” community based care over nursing homes will make a huge difference in where money is spent — with more spent on medical equipment. And Kerry wants to cut the fees that the Baucus bill includes on “medical devices”. The impact on the deficit of Cantwell’s proposal is dependent upon what happens with the Kerry proposal.
    _
    2) Even after the Finance Committee is done “amending” the proposal, the CBO is stymied because the bill still has to be put into “legislative language” — while the CBO will be involved in crafting the language that meets the stated goals of the proposal, it can’t finalize its analysis until that wording is finalized. (In other words, the CBO doesn’t just do the numbers, it is involved in crafting the language that turn into the actual numbers, and crafting that language — and dealing with the interconnected nature of the bill when changes are made to the language to meet the goals of the “bill” passed by the Finance committee–isn’t something that happens overnight.)

  • homerhk

    Thanks Caro, I sort of understand that since the Baucus plan hasn’t been turned into legislative language yet; the quick scores will also be useful, no?

    I suppose that this is a necessary process to go through however and hope that it will merely delay rather than kill reform.

  • bethnva

    This Kate Pickert is new to me–great wonky post! Lots of good reporting, I think. Unlike Zechman, I appreciate the obvious journalism here — it’s not a sarcastic cynical pitch to sell spin. Well done!

  • destor23

    @pluk: You realize of course that the failure of this bill is not going to result in the kind of real reform that you and I want? This is just Hatch protecting the status quo. And I think the deference being showed to the CBO here is absurd.

  • rustyreturns

    Some of the amendments should be pretty easy to score and the idea that it will take 2-3 weeks to do is fairly ridiculous given how quick they were to score the chairman’s mark some few days after it was released.

    .
    Perhaps why it was so “easy to score”, was due to the fact that the CBO was called to the Oval Office and the figures were given to them, simply handed to them as the “official” numbers that should be quoted on how much it will cost for Healthcare Reform.
    .
    Isn’t that the real question that we should be raising at this time? Why did Obama call them to the White House to begin with? Why is Obama concerning himself with the figures the CBO is supposed to give for the actual cost of this boondoggle?

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