Who Would Have Guessed?

In this day of open government, being ushered in by the new President's greater acceptance of the new information technologies, even the Director of the Congressional Budget Office has a blog. A hat tip to Instapundit for this little "inside baseball" information.

The blog (home page here) came to light over a dispute about the CBO scoring the Stimulus Package (that would be HR1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). At this location the director talks about what they think the long term outcome will be of the current Stimulus Package.

The spending and tax relief are spread out over a number of years, so if we expect this to be a long recession, it will be working right up to the end. If we expect a short recession it will still be working as we are in the recovery. The time period examined by the CBO is out to 2019.

Assuming enactment in mid-February, CBO estimates that the bill would increase outlays by $92 billion during the remaining several months of fiscal year 2009, by $225 billion in fiscal year 2010 (which begins on October 1), by $159 billion in 2011, and by a total of $604 billion over the 2009-2019 period. That spending includes outlays from discretionary appropriations in Division A of the bill and direct spending resulting from Division B.

In addition, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting the provisions in Division B would reduce revenues by $76 billion in fiscal year 2009, by $131 billion in fiscal year 2010, and by a net of $212 billion over the 2009-2019 period.

We are rushing into the second phase of stimulating the economy, the TARP having already been launched. We have to move quickly, but we do need to put some minimum thought into this. Otherwise we will have things like Senator Dodd getting us million dollar voting machines that have been scrapped before they were even used. For those counting, it is day 186 since the Good Senator from Conn promised to release his mortgage documents.

Regards  --  Cliff