CBO Non-Partisanship

Douglas Elmendorf had the audacity of criticizing the Democrats’ health plan earlier today:

[Congressional committees] do not propose the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.

On the contrary … the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs.

When asked by Conrad if felt whether “a successful effort [was] being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?”

Elmendorf responded: “No, Mr. Chairman.”

Ouch. Pelosi and Reid handpicked the CBO Director earlier this year, no doubt with input from the Obama team. Now, he’s criticizing their pet plans.

While it may not be easy to fire Elmendorf, he might be side-tracked in the future. Pelosi and Reid are not going to be too happy, but, will it be water under the bridge?

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)’s opening statements at Sotomayor’s committee hearings put her nomination in perspective:

No Republican would have chosen you, Judge; that’s just the way it is. We would have picked Miguel Estrada. We would all have voted for him. And I don’t think anybody on that side would have voted for Judge Estrada, who is a Honduran immigrant, who came to this country as a teenager, graduated from Columbia magna cum laude, Harvard, 1986, magna cum laude and Law Review editor, a stellar background like yours, and that’s just the way it was.

He never had a chance to have this hearing. He was nominated by President Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which I think most people agree is probably the second highest court in the land, and he never had this day.

So the Hispanic element of this hearing’s important, but I don’t want it to be lost that this is mostly about liberal and conservative politics more than it is anything else.

Democrats had a field day with Estrada, even though he was Hispanic, an immigrant and highly qualified.

Today, as we talk about Sotomayor’s nomination, we are constantly reminded that she is a Hispanic. Thus, we cannot criticize her because that would be racist.

But, wasn’t it racist when Estrada was denigrated and humiliated by Democrats?

I am no fan of Sotomayor… (see this and this). In fact, I am deeply worried that she will sail through her Senate confirmations and we will end up with another lifetime of bad judicial decisions, at least on her part.

At the same time, I find it disconcerting that educated bloggers pretending to be the gatekeepers of intellectual discourse on the internet cannot recognize the truth right in front of them. Mirengoff, Powerline, writes:

But what of Ricci’s “troubled” history of litigating employment claims. It consists of a suit claiming disability discrimination when one fire department decided not to hire him (Ricci is dyslexic); an administrative complaint claiming that his discharge by that same fire department was in retaliation for accusing the department of safety violations; and the reverse discrimination suit against the New Haven fire department that Sotomayor mishandled… Read on »