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Congressional Black Caucus Archive

Friday

7

January 2011

1

COMMENTS

What You Need to Know About CBO Scoring

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Taxes

Claims that Obamacare would reduce the deficit ought never to have passed the laugh test, but because the bill was written specifically to game the CBO score, many think repealing it will actually add to the deficit. This is wrong. To understand why, you need to know a little bit about how CBO operates.

First, CBO stands for the Congressional Budget Office. It is part of the legislative branch. It is not, therefore, independent of politics. Both chambers of Congress appoint the Director of the CBO, but he can be removed by a simple resolution of either chamber. In other words, he has a strong incentive to ensure that his organization produces research that pleases politicians. This means, among other things, a heavy bias toward tax and spend policies.

Here’s an example of a CBO double standard that favors big government. When it comes to tax rates, CBO uses a baseline known as current law. This means, for instance, that when the Bush tax rates were extended, CBO said this “cost” money because they were set to expire under existing law, even though the rates were not changed from what they were last year. But when it comes to government spending, CBO takes an entirely different approach. Rather than current law, they use current policy. If a spending program is set to expire under current law, CBO will go ahead and count it as being continued in the baseline because that is the current policy, thus ensuring that there is no “cost” to extending the program. CBO may be “non-partisan,” but that doesn’t prevent its methodology from being ideological.

Second, CBO is significantly constrained in what it can analyze by law. It must respond to requests and bills as they are presented by Congress. It doesn’t matter, for instance, if Congress tells CBO they will not pass some recurring expense down the road despite the fact that they always have in the past, CBO must take them at their word and score any current legislation in front of them accordingly. It is a garbage-in-garbage-out organization. As you can imagine, this can lead to analysis that is near useless in the real world where politicians routinely say one thing and do another.

Third, CBO’s analytical methodology is opaque and historically inaccurate. Despite the current level of unemployment, for instance, CBO has constantly claimed ridiculous job creation numbers as a result of Obama’s stimulus. These same models have failed to accurately predict the observed data.  CBO’s Director confessed that they used Keynesian models to score the stimulus, which guarantees the result merely based on the policy, and not from any observed data. It doesn’t matter what the real world data shows, CBO’s model will always show the stimulus as producing millions of jobs. Who are you going to believe, so to speak, their Keynesian models or your lying eyes?

Yet here we sit, with the faux-authority of the CBO being used to beat anyone over the head who understands that you can’t nationalize health care and expand coverage without significantly increasing costs. I’d suggest that CBO is in need of serious reform, but that’s been the case for decades and it hasn’t happened. Given the likelihood that it won’t happen in the decades ahead either, it’s probably best to just abolish the organization altogether. Between Congressional offices and non-profit think-tanks, there are more than enough outfits capable of analyzing the economic costs of legislation, and at least when these other organizations do it, there isn’t a false pretense that their numbers are beyond reproach. No numbers are beyond reproach and no is methodology above criticism, no matter how desperately the proponents of big government try to claim otherwise.

Sunday

1

August 2010

1

COMMENTS

Ethics Enforcement Is Rrrrrrrrrracist

Written by , Posted in Identity Politics

It’s no surprise, in today’s race obsessed political environment, to find yet another instance in which race is being used to deflect from troubling behavior or bad news.  This time, the entire idea of ethics is being challenged as racist.  You see, there are just too many black members of Congress being investigated for corruption.

Politico reports complaining, and cries of racism, coming from the Congressional Black Caucus regarding the number of their members currently in the spotlight for ethics violations.

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues

…The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations — but take no final actions — on such cases.

There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The article continues on without the authors ever once considering the most obvious explanation.  Maybe CBC members are being “disproportionally” investigated because they are disproportionally unethical.

This explanation is not to say that blacks are more likely to be unethical than whites. Rather, I think there are other forces at work.

Politicians, as a general rule, are scum.  It doesn’t matter what race they belong to.  They would almost all commit the worst of crimes if they thought they could get away with them (and many do think this quite often, usually to be proven right).  The question is, in so far as they do hold back from unethical behavior, what is the cause and why might it impact some politicians more than others?

The answer to the first question is easy.  Politicians are interested in getting elected.  If they think something will harm their electoral chances, they will usually refrain.

The next question, then, is whether there is any reason to believe that black politicians are less likely to be punished by their voters for ethical violations than white politicians.

Black politicians tend to be elected in overwhelmingly black districts, often gerrymandered for the purpose of ensuring “minority” representation.  Their voters, having been inundated with destructive identity politics propaganda for generations, have come to believe that they can only be fairly represented by someone who looks like them.  Race becomes the dominant qualifying criteria in these districts, much more so than other electorates.  White politicians are hardly ever voted for simply for being white (it wouldn’t make sense to do so even if some voters were so inclined, as they are usually running against white opponents).  The same is not true of black politicians. A corrupt black politician is still preferable to a white representative under this racial representation paradigm.

Black politicians are thus taught by their electorates that they are entitled to their positions.  Nothing they do can justify removing them from office, for the simple reason that they can never lose their color, the defining characteristic in the world of  identity politics.

While career politicians who routinely commit ethics violations are ultimately to blame for their actions, the voters who avert their eyes from such behavior have to take their share of the responsibility for creating politicians, like Charlie Rangel, who think that they are above the law.  If the Congressional Black Caucus really wants to know why so many of their members are running afoul of what little ethics enforcement politicians can muster to bring upon themselves, maybe they should start by asking their voters to care more about the character of their representatives, instead of their color.

Monday

28

September 2009

0

COMMENTS

President Obama’s Speech To The Congressional Black Caucus

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

President Obama delivered yet another speech yesterday, this time on home turf at the Congressional Black Caucus.

There was nothing groundbreaking about the speech. Obama wrung his hands once again and blamed everything on Bush. He even reveled in this tired bit of blame-dodging, which he whimsically called “a stroll down memory lane.” After he finished waving his hands in this common but increasingly futile effort to distract from his numerous failures, he turned to health care.

One of the more odd assertions was a claim that, “we have been waiting for health reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt.” Is that a fact? That certainly raises the question: exactly what was in need of reform in 1901, when there was no such thing as health insurance, Medicare, or HMO’s?

The only way to make sense of such an incomprehensible claim is to realize that “health reform” is code for government provision of health care. When properly understood, we realize that intellectual descendants of the Progressives really have been waiting for such “health reform” since Teddy Roosevelt. Indeed, they’ve been waiting diligently for big government Progressive Presidents, from FDR to Obama, to nationalize all the important industries in America.

The problem for the President is that he’s been selling something quite different, because he knows the broad public has not been waiting for any such “health reform” since Teddy Roosevelt.  And as more and more of the public discover just what the President means by “health reform,” they’re increasing saying, “no, we can’t.”

Wednesday

8

April 2009

1

COMMENTS

A Pathetic, Slobbering Love Affair

Written by , Posted in Foreign Affairs & Policy

The Castro lovefest by the American left is disgusting.

Key members of the Congressional Black Caucus are calling for an end to U.S. prohibition on travel to Cuba, just hours after a meeting with former Cuban president Fidel Castro in Havana.

“The fifty-year embargo just hasn’t worked,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Ca.) told reporters this evening at a Capitol press conference after returning from a congressional delegation visit to Cuba. “The bottom line is that we believe its time to open dialogue with Cuba.”

Lee and others heaped praise on Castro, calling him warm and receptive during their discussion. But the lawmakers disputed Castro’s later statement that members of the congressional delegation said American society is still racist.

“It was quite a moment to behold,” Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro.

It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro’s home to be modest and Castro’s wife to be particularly hospitable.

We should end the embargo, but not because Castro is a good guy who we can work with in any way, shape or form, but because a policy of free trade and cultural exchange is the most effective way to undermine the stranglehold his murderous regime has on Cuba.  The best way to free the oppressed people of Cuba is to show them the advantages of freedom.