staff has been consistently more accurate on their economic forecasts, their deficit projections, than the executive branch has.
“What does that mean? It means that the president says, ‘Look, I think we’re in a four-and-one-half-percent growth year and therefore that leaves room for more spending’ or ‘that enables us to cut the budget’ or ‘that enables us to spend more on defense’ or, if you’re a Democratic president, more on domestic policy. And CBO says, ‘No, we think that growth is going to be three percent.’ And therefore you’ve just lost something on the order of $20 billion [in tax revenues for the budget].” 2
Beyond that, CBO can kill new proposals or force drastic revisions merely by giving realistic cost estimates. Eizenstat recalled that in 1977, Joseph Califano, then secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, proposed modest changes in welfare programs, introducing some new elements and offsetting their costs with efficiencies in existing programs. Overall, Califano reckoned the added cost at about $5 billion in 1978.
One morning after the legislation had gone to Congress, Eizenstat was struck by a newspaper headline: CBO TO CARTER—WELFARE REFORM $17 BILLION . The CBO staff, then led by Alice Rivlin, a liberalDemocratic economist, had dismissed Califano’s efficiencies as largely fictional. It pegged the annual cost of Califano’s proposals—in full operation—at $17 billion.
“The second I saw that headline,” Eizenstat recalled, “I said, ‘Our program’s over. There’s no way the Congress is going to pass what they think is a $17 billion welfare-reform proposal.’ ”
The same sort of thing happened to Reagan. The CBO constantly challenged White House economic projections that were tilted to make Reagan’s budgets look better. On the 1987 budget, CBO accused the Reagan administration of understating what the Pentagon would spend by $15 billion. With the higher CBO figure, congressional Republicans as well as Democrats put a tighter squeeze on the Pentagon. It was a dramatic illustration of how the seemingly innocent capacity to make calculations changed the balance of power between the White House and Congress.
The CBO’s new clout epitomized the effort by Congress to build its own expertise on everything from farm programs to Star Wars, because members of Congress did not trust the executive branch to give them the straight story. Congress expanded the personal staffs of individual senators and House members and the committee staffs in both houses; it created the CBO, added to the research service of the Library of Congress, and expanded other support agencies. Overall, congressional staff jumped from about 11,500 to more than 24,000 between 1973 and 1985, as Congress armed itself to lay seige to the executive branch. 3
But simultaneously, the House of Representatives overturned its own power structure. Mainstream congressional Democrats had bridled for years at the seniority system and the power baronies it gave to conservative committee chairmen from the “Solid South.” The Democratic Study Group (DSG), the powerful informal caucus of House liberals, felt squeezed between the committee barons and a president whom they did not trust. According to Dick Conlon, the DSG’s executive director, the DSG set a strategy in late 1969 for breaking up the old baronies.
In 1971 and 1973, they pushed through changes in the rules of the House Democratic Caucus, establishing more democratic principles. 4 The reformers took powers from the old oligarchy and turned them over to the Democratic Caucus as a whole, and also to the speaker, secure in the knowledge that with Carl Albert as a weak speaker, they did not have to worry about that post. Then in early 1975, reinforced by seventy-five freshman Democrats elected in 1974, the reformers ousted three long-entrenched committee chairmen: Wright Patman ofthe Banking Committee, F. Edward Hebert of Armed Services, and W. R.
“What does that mean? It means that the president says, ‘Look, I think we’re in a four-and-one-half-percent growth year and therefore that leaves room for more spending’ or ‘that enables us to cut the budget’ or ‘that enables us to spend more on defense’ or, if you’re a Democratic president, more on domestic policy. And CBO says, ‘No, we think that growth is going to be three percent.’ And therefore you’ve just lost something on the order of $20 billion [in tax revenues for the budget].” 2
Beyond that, CBO can kill new proposals or force drastic revisions merely by giving realistic cost estimates. Eizenstat recalled that in 1977, Joseph Califano, then secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, proposed modest changes in welfare programs, introducing some new elements and offsetting their costs with efficiencies in existing programs. Overall, Califano reckoned the added cost at about $5 billion in 1978.
One morning after the legislation had gone to Congress, Eizenstat was struck by a newspaper headline: CBO TO CARTER—WELFARE REFORM $17 BILLION . The CBO staff, then led by Alice Rivlin, a liberalDemocratic economist, had dismissed Califano’s efficiencies as largely fictional. It pegged the annual cost of Califano’s proposals—in full operation—at $17 billion.
“The second I saw that headline,” Eizenstat recalled, “I said, ‘Our program’s over. There’s no way the Congress is going to pass what they think is a $17 billion welfare-reform proposal.’ ”
The same sort of thing happened to Reagan. The CBO constantly challenged White House economic projections that were tilted to make Reagan’s budgets look better. On the 1987 budget, CBO accused the Reagan administration of understating what the Pentagon would spend by $15 billion. With the higher CBO figure, congressional Republicans as well as Democrats put a tighter squeeze on the Pentagon. It was a dramatic illustration of how the seemingly innocent capacity to make calculations changed the balance of power between the White House and Congress.
The CBO’s new clout epitomized the effort by Congress to build its own expertise on everything from farm programs to Star Wars, because members of Congress did not trust the executive branch to give them the straight story. Congress expanded the personal staffs of individual senators and House members and the committee staffs in both houses; it created the CBO, added to the research service of the Library of Congress, and expanded other support agencies. Overall, congressional staff jumped from about 11,500 to more than 24,000 between 1973 and 1985, as Congress armed itself to lay seige to the executive branch. 3
But simultaneously, the House of Representatives overturned its own power structure. Mainstream congressional Democrats had bridled for years at the seniority system and the power baronies it gave to conservative committee chairmen from the “Solid South.” The Democratic Study Group (DSG), the powerful informal caucus of House liberals, felt squeezed between the committee barons and a president whom they did not trust. According to Dick Conlon, the DSG’s executive director, the DSG set a strategy in late 1969 for breaking up the old baronies.
In 1971 and 1973, they pushed through changes in the rules of the House Democratic Caucus, establishing more democratic principles. 4 The reformers took powers from the old oligarchy and turned them over to the Democratic Caucus as a whole, and also to the speaker, secure in the knowledge that with Carl Albert as a weak speaker, they did not have to worry about that post. Then in early 1975, reinforced by seventy-five freshman Democrats elected in 1974, the reformers ousted three long-entrenched committee chairmen: Wright Patman ofthe Banking Committee, F. Edward Hebert of Armed Services, and W. R.
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