Ezra Klein

It was just two weeks ago that I explained why OMB directors in general are seen as good White House chiefs of staff by the presidents they serve.

In a very strong piece in today's The Washington Post, Ezra Klein explained why one particular former OMB Director -- Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels -- was never going to be the strong presidential candidate some were saying he would be and is not the savior some in the GOP are looking for.

Ezra's analysis about Daniels can easily be broadened to OMB directors in general: With very rare exceptions they're just not right for today's presidential politics. The top five reasons are:

Ezra Klein interviewed me earlier today for his blog at The Washington Post. You can find it here.

Some people, like Ezra Klein, think the taxes/unemployment agreement pending before the Congress this week amply demonstrates that "no one [including the Congress] really cares about the deficit," since the package will add roughly $900 billion to the deficit over the next couple of years. Maybe some people are right. Members of Congress have rarely been reluctant to push a pet spending rock when the opportunity presented itself and this agreement is expensive.

But this was a peculiar kind of opportunity – the last gasp of an outgoing Congress. Easy to blame them, when next year rolls around. But when the posturing stops this week and the last Congress slinks out of town, the last month will have been memorable for the way it changed the atmosphere around deficits, particularly with respect to defense.

Ezra Klein totally unloaded yesterday on the deficit hawks who have been largely or completely silent on paying for the $30 BILLION it's going to cost to send the additional troops to Afghanistan.  Here's the money quote:

...this town is packed full of deficit hawks. Where are the editorial pages on this? Where's the Peterson Institute? David Walker? The Committee for a Responsible Budget?

Update 12/2: I was appropriately corrected by Maya MacGuineas, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's executive director, for missing this, and this.  As Brad DeLong would say, that's a smackdown.  That doesn't excuse the other so-called deficit hawks either for not engaging or, worse, running in the other direction on the war costs, but it does mean that CRFB is...and...was on the case.

David Broder has a column in today's The Washington Post that I find close to incomprehensible. 

First he says that the Congressional Budget Office's substantive, detailed analysis shows that the bill proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will reduce the deficit. 

(Note to David: CBO does not give its "blessing" to legislation; all it does is score the bill.)

Second, he says that the CBO scoring that shows the bill reducing the deficit compared to existing law is not as valuable as polls that show that Americans don't believe it.  And he says that the polls are somehow more correct than CBO even though one group actually analyzed the bill while the other got its almost certainly less-than-complete-and accurate information from someone else.

Third, Broder says "every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters."