Democrats' Next Plan to Get Biden's Agenda Over the Finish Line: Fire the Scorekeeper

[brooklynite]

Mother Jones

President Joe Biden unveiled a $2.25 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan last month and has promised to seek input from Republican lawmakers on its ultimate design. That courtship begins Monday when Biden and Vice President Harris meet with a bipartisan group of House and Senate members to discuss the proposal. But his administration has already signaled its willingness to push a bill through Congress with only Democratic votes, a route subject to the byzantine rules of the budget reconciliation process that could muck up Biden’s agenda.

Behind closed doors, Democrats in Congress are considering a drastic move to make their push around those rules easier: Fire the director of the Congressional Budget Office, the scorekeeping agency that measures the federal budget impact of pending legislation. The interest stems from some Democrats’ disappointment over the CBO’s recent scores of the party’s top priorities and a desire to see the office led by an economist willing to give Democrats the scores they’re looking for to push Biden’s agenda over the finish line. Such a move would make the ostensibly nonpartisan office a wonky pawn in the three-dimension chess game Democrats hope to play to push Biden’s agenda over the finish line.

The move is being deliberated among Senate Democratic staff, according to several senior Democratic sources, with some outreach to progressive House members. Staffers for the Senate Committee on the Budget, which is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have already provided Senate Democratic leadership with a list of potential replacements for the role.

Removing the CBO director is just one aspect of a larger plan Democrats are hatching to pass Biden’s agenda in a narrowly divided Congress, where the party holds the majority by just one vote. In addition to using reconciliation to get much of it over the finish line, the Senate parliamentarian recently signed off on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) request to revise budget bills to include pieces of Biden’s jobs plan—essentially opening the door for Democrats to pass bills with a simple majority at least three more times between now and the 2022 midterms.

[bottomofthehill]

1. Bad idea

It was a bad idea when the republicans wanted to do it it’s a bad idea now. Much like wanting to fire the senate parliamentarian.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. Disagree vociferously

For too long the country has watched Dems fail to accomplish the things they promised when they gain power because we're so enamored with rule following. All the while we face republicans who will do whatever it takes to deliver for the rich.

Biden has an agenda 2/3s of the country wants, delivering for that 2/3s is what will decide the political futures of both parties. And more than that it's what will decide the economic and social future of the country.

In 2 years Dems can run on a long list of accomplishments that are very popular with the public, or they can say, they didn't pass those things because they were more concerned with honoring tradition and procedure in Congress.

[The Magistrate]

2. Fire His Ass, Sir

"Swagel had worked in the conservative world of economists, having served as an assistant Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, where he oversaw policies relating to the financial crisis, and held various roles on Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. He has also held roles at the American Enterprise and Milken Institutes, two conservative think tanks."

With a curriculum vitae like that, he oughtn't be near anything with a say in economic policy.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. A big fat K&R!

[gratuitous]

5. This is "a drastic move"?

Putting an economist in charge of the CBO who is actually grounded in reality is "drastic." That's where we are right now. Uh huh.