Congressional Budget Office
Director’s Blog

Today President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate me as director of the Office of Management and Budget.  I am therefore resigning as director of CBO and this will be my final blog entry.

I have absolutely loved my time at CBO.  CBO is unique because it combines rigor, relevance, and range.  Rigor reflects the intellectual integrity of what CBO does.  Relevance speaks to the importance of what it does.  And range reflects the wide array of topics upon which CBO has something important to say – from national security to labor markets to natural resources, health care, immigration, and the list goes on and on and on.  (This blog has also been a special treat: it has provided another way of discussing CBO’s work and some of my own views about the policy world.)

Perhaps most fundamentally, CBO is a reflection of the smart and hard-working but also warm and wonderful people who work here.  (If you find it hard to believe that budget analysts and economists can be warm and wonderful, please just take my word for it.) I have worked with many outstanding people in both the public sector and the private sector, and the CBO staff is truly exceptional in its analytical capability and its devotion to the work it does.   

I will very much miss CBO, and hope that I will do it proud if I am confirmed by the Senate to assume my new post.

Peter R. Orszag

The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences announced its new members this morning. I’m quite honored to be included in this group — along with Jose Escarce, who is on CBO’s Panel of Health Advisers. I view my inclusion as testimony to what the outstanding CBO health staff has taught me about health care and health policy, and look forward to continuing to learn from them and other innovators in the field.

While I’m on the topic of health care, I’d like to make a point related to the current turmoil in financial markets. Many observers have noted that addressing the problems in financial markets and the risks to the economy may displace health care reform on the policy agenda — and that may well be the case for some period of time. (As a small example, I know that over the past few months I have been spending less time on health care because the turmoil in financial markets and associated issues have consumed much more of our time and attention at CBO. This displacement is a matter of finite time and energy, not budgetary resources.)

Although it may not seem immediately relevant given our current difficulties, it will be crucial to address the nation’s looming fiscal gap — which is driven primarily by rising health care costs — as the economy eventually recovers from this current downturn. Indeed, our ability to address our current economic difficulties (through both financial market interventions and potential additional fiscal stimulus) would be severely impaired if investors were not so willing to invest substantial sums in Treasury securities without charging much higher interest rates. That willingness reflects the (currently accurate) view among investors that Treasury securities are extremely safe investments.

If we fail to put the nation on a sounder fiscal course over the next few decades, though, we will ultimately reach a point where investors would lose confidence and no longer be as willing to purchase Treasury debt at anything but exorbitant interest rates. If that were to occur, we would lack the kind of maneuvering room that we currently enjoy to address problems in the financial markets and the economy. So if you think the current economic crisis is serious, and it is, imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have the ability to undertake aggressive and innovative policy interventions because creditors were effectively unwilling to lend substantial additional sums to the Federal government…

CBO has a fantastic internship program — I regularly hear from former interns about what a wonderful experience they had as part of the program. In addition to our summer intern program, we also recently created a Health Policy Internship, which may be available on a summer, semester, or year-long basis depending on work needs and students’ availability.

Here’s a photo of this year’s CBO interns:

The summer internships normally last about ten weeks and include compensation based on academic level and work experience.

Interns contribute to CBO’s work in program areas such as budget and tax policy, health care, national defense, the environment, education, retirement and other income assistance, regulation, and public investment. They participate in an educational program that includes briefings on the agency’s role in the budget process, and may also participate in seminars offered by other Congressional support agencies and in the Congressional Summer Intern Lecture Series. (Our slots are unfortunately already filled for this summer!)

For more on our internships, see here.