The Joint Committee's on Taxation's new website, which was rolled out this week, brings the mysterious methodologies of revenues estimates into clearer view. "Inside the JCT Revenue Estimating Process," a 26-page point point presentation by the JCT Chief of Staff reads like a pitch, with descriptions of tax models and application examples, the staff's access to 180,000 tax returns (enabling the Committee to create a "virtual world of American economic activity'), and a defense of its "Fixed GNP COnstraint" approach.

A flowchart is provided on page 17 entitled "JCT Quality Control and Process," which shows the various levels of input and review that goes into each revenue estimate. If you've ever seen the JCT anaylsis letters that accompany their estimates, they are impressively sophisticated.

But there is something missing from the materials that is probably important for members, staff, and the general public to know. The Committee claims that it "handle[d] 7,800 revenue estimate request in 2007" (p. 3). It published only 121 of these; only those referred to in public reports are published. So it completes some number of estimates over and above this number, but its staff of about three dozen can't possible do all that is requested of it. The website should explain:

• How many of the estimate requests it receives does it undertake?
• How does it decide which to undertake?
• How and when does it communicate its decisions regarding which to undertake?

The website is a good deal more readable and some information previously unavailable to the public is included in it. But to be fully accountable and transparent in its process and method -- to the degree it can be, given that it performs its tasks for and provides its product to members of Congress only -- is should explain how it decides which of the small fraction of the nearly 8,000 estimate requests it gets it decides to perform.

The new Joint Committee on Taxation website, new as of this week, is mostly a look-and-feel improvement. Little of the material is new here, but you no longer feel as though you're entering a 19th century crypt when you log into it.

There's also a document, posted today, "Inside the JCT Revenue Estimating Process," by Edward Kleinbard, the JCT Chief of Staff, which we'll give a closer look later. Suffice it to say that it begins to demystify the Committee's methodology, but it's unfortunately rendered in bullet points.

How the JCT choses which legislation to provide estimates for and the timeframe involved in the decision and execution are outlined, but not explained, in a flow chart. This process is opaque even to members of the Senate. These questions basically go unanswered, so the discreet delphic charm of the JCT remains fundamentally entact.

The FAQ section is written in prose, rather than bullet points, but it's short, addressing only four questions.

Even though there's lots of overlap in the site, there are a few very helpful sections, notably:

• Joint Committee Role in the Tax Legislative Process
• Joint Committee Revenue Estimation Process

In case anyone wonders, as the graph below shows, JCT is a growth business:

(click on image to enlarge)

During his State of the Union address last night, President Bush tried to create the impression that he cares about wasteful pork spending and wants to reduce it by a lot and right away:

The people's trust in their government is undermined by congressional earmarks -- special interest projects that are often snuck in at the last minute, without discussion or debate. Last year, I asked you to voluntarily cut the number and cost of earmarks in half. I also asked you to stop slipping earmarks into committee reports that never even come to a vote. Unfortunately, neither goal was met. So this time, if you send me an appropriations bill that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half, I will send it back to you with my veto. And tomorrow, I will issue an executive order that directs federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by the Congress.

1. Presidential Power Grab: the phrase suggesting "congressional earmarks" are a unique evil undermining people's trust in their government is deliberately misleading and self-serving. Both Congress and the President provide project-specific direction to appropriations. If the amount of earmark spending by the president is not in fact greater than the congressionally-requested amount, it is at least very close to it. Neither side can be expected to disarm unilaterally in what is really a bid by Bush to gain the upper hand in a struggle between the branches for earmark authority.

2. Cutting Earmarks Saves Zero Dollars: Bush's remarks -- and, frankly, those of many earmark reform advocates -- imply that eliminating earmarks would save taxpayer dollars. It's not true. It wouldn't save a penny. Money that is not earmarked by Congress or the President will be spent anyway, as federal agencies see fit. In the end, every dollar spent is earmarked for something. This point is lost on many people: earmark reform is not a fiscal issue -- cutting earmarks out entirely would not reduce spending by a single penny.

The foregoing does not mean that earmark reform is not needed. Citizens should know more about how and where their government's money is spent. More debate is necessary on what pork is and how to limit narrow special interest breaks and bennies. But no one should be under any illusion about what eliminating "congressional earmarks" would or would not accomplish, and who would benefit or suffer as a result.

Elections are the time when politicians pay the most attention to people and issues, and therefore the best time to ask them questions about how they plan to govern. OMB Watch wants your help in figuring out the best questions on government transparency that can be put to the candidates. Take just a few minutes to answer our survey and vote on your five favorite questions on the issue of government transparency and openness. We will then share the top questions with the news media and other organizations that have direct contact with candidates.

Government openness affects every issue from budget and taxes, to the regulatory process, to non-profit advocacy. The range of questions tries to reflect this breadth so check them and see which are most important to you.

Take the Open Government: What We Need To Know Survey today.

House and Senate GOP members are still on retreat in West Virginia today, with young turks battling old bulls over party policy on those nefarious earmarks.

Informed sources and Porkbusters say that the earmarks donnybrook lies ahead on the agenda, when Rep. Jack Kingston's (GA) H. Con. Res. 263, a propoposal introduced last November to impose a six-month moratorium on all earmarks, will be taken up by the party in retreat.

Six months? As a budget policy, that's stillborn. What a difference a year would make. Other equally inane non-starter proposals will be under discussion, including a hilarious ban on earmarks for projects named after themselves.

This is much ado about nothing, and in private, no less. In case anyone has forgotten, never has an earmark meant one additional penny in spending; reducing earmarks has no impact whatsoever on spending levels. Nor do earmarks mean pork, which is subjectively defined and eagerly consumed in districts everywhere.

In short, tastes great, less filling. Let disclosure be a porkbusting disinfectant.

The coverage of yesterday Congressional GOP retreat in Roll Call make clear the about-face that party leaders are making on earmarks.

Republican leaders ... made it clear during the retreat that they would not support any effort by President Bush to strip earmarks from this year's omnibus bill and saw no need to overhaul the practice... arguing any move [by Bush] to eliminate the earmarks would be an inappropriate infringement on Congress' authority to appropriate funding.

A Senator attending the retreat said later, "to the extent that the floor was open I didn't hear much opposition... I kept expecting to hear someone say 'yeah but earmarks are evil,' but I didn't."

What a difference a year -- an election year -- makes.

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Posted by Craig Jennings, 11:49:37 AM

Wednesday, January 09, 2008