Now They Tell Us: Dems Warn Not To Politicize CBO
Keep the bureaucracy neutral? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner were unavailable for comment.
Democrats, who have spent the better part of the last six years politicizing… everything, are suddenly concerned that Republicans might politicize the Congressional Budget Office with a new appointment.
Vicki Needham of The Hill reported:
Dems warn GOP: No ‘ideologue’ in budget job
Senate Democrats are warning Republicans to tread carefully with their selection of a budget scorekeeper for the new Congress, saying they will “strongly object to any effort to politicize this important office.”
“Appointing a new [Congressional Budget Office] director on the basis of ideology would fundamentally compromise the integrity of an institution that has served as a trusted scorekeeper,” a group of Senate Democrats wrote in a letter sent to Republican leaders and budget chairmen. As one of their first acts this year Republicans must decide whether to give another term to Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
While the CBO job is little-known outside Washington, it holds enormous power. The “scores” handed out by the office — measuring the impact of legislation on the budget — are often make-or-break for legislation, particularly if a bill is found to add to the deficit.
Too bad Senate Democrats didn’t have the same concerns about politicization when they released the so-called “torture report” last month, huh?
As Mike Hayden of the Washington Times noted two weeks ago, it was all about politics:
Democrats define ‘politicization’ with so-called torture report
This is not about defending torture. It’s about defending history.
And maybe a little bit about preserving the future.
First, some facts. The CIA held about a hundred detainees from 2002 to 2008; about a third of them underwent interrogations that have been variously described as enhanced, tough or torture. The toughest technique was water boarding, used on three detainees, the last in early 2003. At the other end of the spectrum was grabbing a detainee’s chin or collar. In between were things like being limited to a liquid diet of about 1400 calories day.
If you think any of these objectively constitute torture, I respect your position. It is a principled one. Torture is always wrong…
The Senate Democrat document, however, denies such credit and reads like a shrill prosecutorial screed rather than a dispassionate historical study. The staff started with a conclusion and then cherry picked their way through six million pages, ignoring some data and highlighting others, to make their case — the very definition of politicization. The report is exceedingly graphic; it is designed to shock and it does.
Let’s not forget Attorney General Eric Holder who has politicized the Department of Justice, Senator Elizabeth Warren who politicizes economic issues or Lois Lerner and others who politicized the IRS.
It takes a politicizer to know one.
Methinks the Democrats doth protest too much.
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Comments
Didn’t the Dems use the CBO itself by directing them to score ObamaCare in a way that avoided showing how expensive it was? Google “ObamaCare + CBO + CLASS”
Have to agree with this 2014 suggestion:
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/199069/
How about we go ahead and just neuter bureaucracy to keep it from multiplying. Less Grubers, less Lois Lerners, less EPA, less government, more money in every pocket.
(Moves to a empty chair well away from Ms. J and crosses legs involuntarily).
Henry you’re back! Or, maybe I’m back! Anyway, Happy Neuter Year!
Total War.
We are running out of time.
Would this be the same CBO that worked hand-in-glove with Gruber to lie to the American people about the costs of Obamacare? He wrote an actual computer program on how to exploit the huge gaps in the CBO’s accounting procedures in order to produce false projections, and the CBO had full access to all of it, but instead of exposing this fraud they covered it up. Under the Democrats this “non-partisan” office was 100% politicized.
Liberals don’t want conservatives using their tactics because they know they’re effective.
You needed a spew alert with that headline.
One of the great failures of this administration has been the pattern of gross denial of equal protection under the laws, in multiple agencies and in multiple budgetary programs.
Rule sets that selfishly change as a person or group wants/needs them to are supposed to be left behind where the practice orignally forms – in childhood.
The GOP is just as bad. Our country is being run by intellectual children.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the GOP isn’t the one who started changing the rules. The only thing I fault the GOP for is even considering returning to the prior status quo without hammering the Democrats with what the Democrats hammered them with first.
There is a huge expanse of difference between what goes for being intellectual and being “common sense” smart. With the reference to children, that’s disparaging to too many really good kids. We might want to start having some of those good kids sitting in with those who are elected to lead. Perhaps they would begin acting like the adults they claim to be.
It’s amazing how this messaging by the democRats is received by the hacks running the GOP as if it was dispensed by Karl Rove or Steve Schmidt(rhymes with…)
And it’s equally amazing that ANY Karl Rove or Steve Schmidt (rhymes with…) messaging is taken seriously by the hacks running the GOP.
Schmidt (rhymes with…) in action with apparently HIS advisor, Bill Mahr:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXbjpTrRwX0
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/07/republicans-assail-president-obama-meeting-with-congressional-budget-office-director-as-inappropriat/
Republicans Assail President Obama Meeting with Congressional Budget Office Director As Inappropriate
” an institution that has served as a trusted scorekeeper”
That we can game the hell out of. Witness Obamacare.