Starigh from the horses arse

Every couple of days I try to check out the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) director’s blog. For those of you unfamiliar with the CBO (kind of a stretch if you are in following the healthcare train wreck)…they are a group chartered by the following mandate (from their website):

CBO's mandate is to provide the Congress with:
- Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and
- The information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

Anyway…back to the director’s blog. It is usually filled with loads of crap that most Americans wouldn’t give a rat’s turd about. But every now and then…a real gem of a nugget comes along that I just can’t resist. The director’s latest entry is a particularly juicy morsel for those of us who have reached deep (really deep) to resist the temptation of simply ignoring this mess.

The current director is Douglas Elmendorf … but I think I am going to call him Doogie from here forward. Anyway…Doogie goes on for about 6 paragraphs laying down the pretext for their latest analysis – an attempt to find the best policy option moving forward to create jobs - noble effort indeed. Basically, all you need to know is that bigger numbers on the graph are better, since that means more jobs created. Before we even go into what constitutes the top ten best policy options identified…look at the scale: 0 to 20. Well now you are probably asking yourself…what does 1 unit of “years of full-time-equivalent employment per Million Dollars of Total Budgetary cost” really mean? My interpretation:

• Worst Case = 1 job created for $1M “spent” --> $1M / job. (ok – technically it could be zero…but our congress would never do that…)
• Best Case = 20 jobs created for $1M “spent” --> $50K / job

…oh this should be veeeery interesting indeed (FYI - the median US salary is ~$35K with median household income of ~$50K).

Ok…on to the top items (their graph and my summary):

#1 “Give money away”
#2 “Cut taxes”

#3 “Cut taxes”

#4 “Cut taxes”
#5 “Give money away”
#6 “Cut Taxes”
#7 “Spend”
#8 “Spend”
#9 “Cut taxes”
#10 “Cut taxes”
#11 “Cut taxes”

Please note: “Increase taxes” is not on the list.

Good work Doogie! Too bad the only thing the Hill will hear is that "give money away" is in slot #1.

As an aside: If you had to chose between the two best rated policy options of "Increase aid to the unemployed" or "Reducing employer's payroll taxes for firms that increase their payroll" which would you choose? (or maybe we could do both if we didn't have the healthcare albatross on the table...)