“Congressional Budget Office” on The Daily Caller

During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted to double-counting in the Obamacare budget. (more)

The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform held hearings this week on the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA). Congress enacted UMRA to “curb the practice of imposing unfunded federal mandates on states and local governments,” but observers agree that its effects have been limited due to (1) narrow coverage and (2) lack of accountability. (more)

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed Thursday during a House Budget Committee hearing that President Barack Obama’s health care law will reduce the workforce by 800,000 by 2021 because some individuals will no longer have to work just so they can afford health insurance, Politico reported Thursday. (more)

Over the last thirty years, most legislative and executive branch efforts at regulatory reform have focused on analyzing and improving new regulations, and agencies seldom look back to evaluate whether existing regulations are having their intended effects. Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act provides for periodic review of regulations for their impact on small businesses, but researchers have found that most agencies “comply with the letter of the law for only a small percentage of their rules, and they rarely take action beyond publishing a brief notice in the Federal Register.” (more)

If Washington had grown fuzzy about the razor’s edge the U.S. economy is currently balanced on, it got a bracing reminder Thursday. (more)

I watched what I thought was the State of the Union for 15 minutes on Tuesday before I figured out that it was The Biggest Loser. (more)

1.) FCIC dissenters defend bailing out Wall Street — Two reports will come out of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today. The one written by the panel’s liberal majority will blame lax regulation and the banking industry for the collapse of the housing industry. The other, written by commissioners Bill Thomas, a former Republican congressman from California, Keith Hennessey, former chairman of the White House National Economic Council under President George W. Bush, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, spreads the blame more broadly among “investors, creditors, regulators, homebuyers, and politicians,” all of whom must take “personal responsibility.” The dissenters also defended bailing out Wall Street: “For a policymaker, the calculus is simple: if you bail out AIG and you’re wrong, you will have wasted taxpayer money and provoked public outrage,” the paper reads. “If you don’t bail out AIG and you’re wrong, the global financial system collapses. It should be easy to see why policymakers favored action–there was a chance of being wrong either way, and the costs of being wrong without action were far greater than the costs of being wrong with action.” Thank goodness we didn’t destabilize the global financial system, which might have led to really scary stuff, like high unemployment. (more)

A group of three conservatives on President Obama’s financial crisis inquiry commission called the final report of the panel “unbalanced” and “incorrect,” in a 27-page dissent from the more than 500-page document endorsed by a majority of members. (more)

The Congressional Budget Office issued updated figures today that predict the budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 will be a flaming huge $1.5 trillion. That’s about $414 billion bigger than the CBO last August figured this year’s shortfall would be. And yes, it would be a record in terms of absolute dollar red ink for Uncle Sam. (more)

The House passed a bill Wednesday that would remove public funding for presidential campaigns by a vote of 239 to 160. Ten democrats voted for the bill. (more)

I’m sure that many of you have driven a car for so many years that eventually the engine gives out. You can put in a new muffler or a new radiator. You can replace the transmission and put on a new coat of paint. But if the engine has failed, then that car won’t run again until you put in a new engine. (more)

Can GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt talk President Obama into a major corporate tax cut? Immelt has been appointed to the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which replaces the disbanded Paul Volcker Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Immelt was a member of that original board. Now he has a more elevated position in the Obama 2.0, allegedly pro-business, move-to-the-center Clintonesque White House. (more)

The unemployment rate and the nation’s increasingly precarious fiscal position – its enormous budget deficits and its ballooning debt – will be the dual points of emphasis in President Obama’s second State of the Union address on Tuesday. (more)

T-mobile gets better reception than Obamacare. Support for the law cratered to just 43 percent — an all-time low — in last month’s Washington Post poll. And since two more provisions took effect on January 1, repeal ought to be Republicans’ top priority — come Hell or high water. (more)

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Thursday released an estimate of the House Republican bill to fully repeal Obamacare. It found that doing so would increase the deficit by $230 billion. (more)

There was no way that they would fail. Their bonds were rated AAA, they were managed by the chairman of the stock market, they were America’s seventh largest company, and expert accountants confirmed their long-term fiscal viability. But still, AIG, Madoff Investment Securities, Enron, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all went bankrupt. (more)

The Congressional Budget Office this afternoon released more details on the budgetary effects of repealing the healthcare law. In his director’s blog, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said the office believes repealing the law would reduce revenues by $770 billion through 2021 and reduce spending by $540 billion in that same time period. (more)

1.) We will all die of old age before anyone cuts spending — After a largely symbolic repeal of Obamacare, what will Republicans do next to cut spending? Absolutely nothing, apparently. “Entitlement reform will only be done on a bipartisan basis. So we’re waiting for signals from the president as to whether or not that’s a discussion he’s willing to have,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, in a Thursday press conference. “The president must embrace it.” The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward writes, “House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, acted on Tuesday as if Obama was the one who was just elected based on promises to cut government spending” and that “House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio Republican, had no answer Thursday for NBC’s Brian Williams when asked to name ‘a program right now that we could do without.’” Head, desk. (more)

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio brushed off a preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that said repealing the Democrats’ health care law would add about $230 billion to the federal deficit over the next ten years. (more)

Democratic staff passed out a press release to reporters on their way into a briefing with the new House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer Tuesday that read: “Meet the New Republicans – Same as the Old Republicans.” (more)