Washington’s top anti-tax crusader is calling for the incoming Republican majority to take control of legislation on taxes and spending by getting rid of Douglas Elmendorf, Congress’ in-house nonpartisan budget scorekeeper.
“There is no doubt that he is a career Man of the Left,” Norquist wrote in a letter sent to Republican leadership Friday.
The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has significant clout on the Right. The group is known in particular for getting Republican candidates to sign a pledge to their constituents not to raise taxes while in office.
His broadside against Elmendorf comes as other top conservative economists have called for Elmendorf to be reappointed as director of the Congressional Budget Office when his term runs out in January. Elmendorf, a Democratic selection, has run the CBO since late 2008. During that time, he has provided the official economic and budget estimates for such major legislation as Obamacare, the 2009 stimulus and the Senate immigration bill.
His management of the budgetary treatment of those bills has at times earned him criticism from the Right, as well as the Left. But in recent weeks, a number of right-of-center policy experts have endorsed him for another term. Those experts include former George W. Bush economic adviser N. Gregory Mankiw and American Enterprise Institute economist Michael Strain.
“Elmendorf has been a great steward of one of our country’s important institutions — he is a public servant of great integrity,” Strain wrote in a post on National Review Online. “A CBO director less dedicated to solid, mainstream, academic, non-partisan analysis could put a large dent in the quality of the CBO’s work and reputation,” Strain warned.
But Norquist provided a laundry list of complaints with Elmendorf’s track record. “Reappointing Elmendorf would be validating the status quo,” he warned.
Norquist specifically faulted Elmendorf for assuming the stimulus would boost the economy and for “inaccurate” models of Obamacare. He also knocked Elmendorf for being reluctant to use dynamic scoring in evaluating taxes. Dynamic scoring makes tax cuts seem less costly to the Treasury than conventional scoring, and Republicans are seeking to make it more widely used by the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation.
In the past, he noted, the party in control of Congress has picked its own candidate, and Republicans should do so now that they have majorities in both chambers. “It’s absurd to say that Democrats have that right, but that Republicans are not free to pick their own CBO director when they are in the majority,” Norquist said.
