Knowing the score.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Soundbite - Douglas Holtz-Eakin on health care reform - Interview

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In March 2010, as House Democrats were preparing for their final votes on ObamaCare, the economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin published an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that, despite official Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores saying otherwise, the president's health care overhaul probably would increase the nation's budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. Since then, he has become one of the most prominent critics of the claim that the law will reduce the deficit.

Holtz-Eakin--who currently heads the American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute--isn't just any critic: From 2003 to 2005, he ran the CBO. His time there gave him firsthand knowledge of the scoring process and its inherent limitations. Associate Editor Peter Suderman spoke with him in January.

Q.: A lot of ObamaCare's defenders seem to be accusing critics like you of trying to have it both ways with regard to the CBO. On one hand, you use its estimates pretty frequently. On the other hand, you're saying that CBO's projections of ObamaCare's fiscal impact are probably wrong.

A: I have nothing but the highest respect and admiration for the quality of the estimates that CBO produces. Period. I have nothing but a deep understanding of the rules by which they must use those estimates, and the way the law was written in order to get the deficit reduction bottom line-by reading out some costs, using budget gimmicks, putting in unrealistic estimates of future Medicare reductions. None of that has anything to do with CBO's competence or professionalism. That's a congressional problem. Congress used CBO to get the answer they wanted. I get that. I ran the CBO. They used me too.

Q: To clarify, I think part of the criticism is that you can't rely on CBO estimates when it's convenient.

A: I think you should use their numbers in an informed way. I'm trying to inform people about the way in which the particular bottom lines here have been developed.

Q: Similarly, I'm hearing people complain that criticism of the scoring leads to a reduction in the CBO's authority and therefore a more...