Congress’ official budget scorekeeper said Monday that it was up to members of Congress, not him, to decide whether to make “dynamic scoring” the norm for budget estimates.
Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, weighed in on the question of estimating tax changes at an appearance at the Brookings Institution Monday.
With Republicans set to take over both chambers of Congress in January, conservative lawmakers are considering overhauling the budget process to make official scores reflect the added tax revenue from economic growth that would come from cutting tax cuts. Republicans have said that such a dynamic score, rather than a static score that assumes no macroeconomic feedback from tax cuts, should be used as the baseline.
Part of that effort could involve replacing the scorekeepers, including Elmendorf, whose term expires in January.
Elmendorf said his office already provides dynamic scores, and that it’s up to members of Congress to decide whether or not to use them for the purposes of setting budgets and appropriating funds.
“Doing those kinds of analyses — again, for legislation that would plausibly have noticeable macroeconomic effects and when there’s time in the congressional process for us to do it — that’s fine, we’re doing that now,” Elmendorf said. As examples, he pointed to recent analyses of Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, last year’s Senate bill on immigration reform, and outgoing Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s tax-reform proposal.
But the Joint Committee on Taxation, not the CBO, provides the official scores for tax legislation. For Camp’s reform proposal, the JCT published a range of estimates based on different macroeconomic effects, including one scenario in which the reform brought in an additional $700 billion.
“The question for the members of Congress is how they want to use that information,” Elmendorf said. “And that’s really up to them to decide what role they want to give these estimated macroeconomic effects in their feedback to the budget when they consider legislation.”
Incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price told reporters Friday that it was an “ongoing discussion” whether to change the rules governing the JCT and CBO and whether to replace the directors of the two offices.
Price said it was “imperative” to change the budget process, partly to accentuate dynamic scoring. He has authored a bill to accomplish that goal, but said Friday that the GOP majority may opt to simply change internal House rules, which would not require a vote or Democratic input. “There are ways to address it in the rules. Whether or not that’s what we’ll do is an open question,” Price said.
