Mid-Session Budget Review: Conspiracy Theorists Unite

I've been working on the federal budget in one way or another for more than 30 years so please trust me when I say that the mid-session review of the budget has NEVER been sexy.  In fact, outside a very small circle of federal budget people, the mid-session review has barely ever been a topic of conversation, and even that almost certainly overstates the case.

That's why it's hard not to be more than just a little amused over the way this year's mid-session review suddenly became relatively big news today.

Here's the background.

The mid-session review of the budget is an OMB document that supposedly updates the budget the president submits earlier in the year.  It's supposed to be released July 15, but the White House today officially let it be known that the report wouldn't be available until sometime in August.

The reaction to this announcement was so over-the-top that you would think it was an admission that waterboarding really was torture.  House Miniroity Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who just before he issued his statement probably had to be reminded that there even was something called a mid-session review, said the delayed release was "...an attempt to hide a record-breaking deficit..." In another article he was quoted as saying the delay was because the administration wanted to "bury(ing) this budget update..."

Meanwhile, the Associated Press had a story that Matthew Yglesias called "provocative" and "speculating" that has the conspiracy concept down cold. 

Here's the real story.

First, this is not news.  Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag first publicly said in JUNE that the mid-session review wouldn't be released until August.

Second, this isn't news.  In transition years like this one, when the president's budget is submitted after the first-Monday-in-February deadline and Congress starts working on the budget late as a result, mid-session budget reviews are often released after July 15.  For example, when George W. Bush became president in 2001, the mid-session review was also released after the deadline.

Third, this isn't news.  Mid-session budget reviews are often submitted after the deadline.  Last year's mid-session review, for example, was sent to Congress on July 28 and the fiscal 2005 mid-session review was released on June 30.

Fourth, Boehner seems to have forgoten that this White House not only has done nothing to hide the deficit, it has gone out of its way to make the deficit as high as possible.  The budget it submitted in February included a number of things that the Bush administration had omitted in its budgets including the full costs of this year's activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and funds to pay for natural disasters.  The Obama budget also included $250 billion just in case a second financial bailout plan was needed.

Fifth, everyone seems to be forgetting that mid-session reviews typically only tweak the numbers that were submitted earlier and often aren't the wholesale change that the AP story indicates it might be.  It is not inconceivable, for example, that the administration will stick to something close to its original economic forecast and that the deficit estimates could be close to or even a little below what they were in February.  In fact, if anything, other than unemplyment the forecast the administration used in February seems far less optimistic now than it did back then.

Is the delay in submitting the mid-session review totally the result of scheduling?  Of course not.  There's little doubt that the White House is hoping that, as the stock market continues to climb and other economic statistics keep indicating that things are getting better, it either will have more good news to include or will have more credibility to say that's its original forecast is still correct.  It's also certainly hoping that any bad news will be less of a story if it is released when Congress is out of town in August.

But that's only part of what's happening and to suggest that transition-related scheduling is not a big part, or the biggest part of what's going on here, shows a deep misunderstanding of what it takes to put a report like this together.

Wait!. There's More:  Here's what Megan McArdle has to say on the subject.