VIDEO- Orszag: "I noticed we just had a bunch of chocolate around..."

By GottaLaff

The coolest, cutest geek ever! I love this guy:

OMB Director Peter Orszag explains a new pedometer challenge for federal employees. The voluntary challenge hopes to promote healthy competition between government employees based on existing or developing walking habits.

Mr. Orszag kicks off the competition with a stroll to the newly opened farmers market near the White House.

Eat your carrots or no Tee Vee for you!

The ObamAdministration Saves $100 Million

By GottaLaff

On April 20th, President Obama ordered his Cabinet to come up with at least $100 million in budget cuts. Via Peter Orszag:

In a memo that Cabinet Secretary Chris Lu and I sent to the President, we report that agencies have identified 77 cost-saving measures that meet these criteria – amounting to $243 million in savings through 2010 and $265 million including savings in the out-years. Of this, about $102 million would be realized in FY 2009, and about $140 million would be saved in FY 2010.

[Among others, h]ere are a few:

• The Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service expects to save $1.8 million in FY 2009 by ceasing to re-paint newly purchased vehicles;

• Numerous agencies will save money by improving energy efficiency and promoting more economical use of resources like water and paper. The Department of the Interior, for example, expects to save almost $1.3 million in utility bills and operating costs by FY 2010 by retrofitting buildings owned by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service;

• The Department of Justice will save an estimated $4 million in FY 2010 by requiring personnel to make their travel arrangements online, rather than relying on travel agents;

• The Navy expects to save over $10 million in FY 2009-10 by modifying maintenance procedures for submarines to reduce costs and focus on the highest priority work; and

• The Department of Education plans to increase its reliance on in-house resources for planning events and conferences. ED will require all D.C.-based conference with attendance of 250 people or less to take place in one of the Department’s two buildings – saving upwards of $65,000 a year. They will also eliminate a contract with outside providers to conduct Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act training to education community stakeholders. Instead, ED will be using existing staff to conduct the training, saving $70,000 for FY 2009.

As for me, I cut out going to Sephora.

Orszag response to CBO report: Supports what Obama has said all along

By GottaLaff

Peter Orszag responds to the CBO report I posted about earlier. Ahem, not so fast there, Politico:

This morning, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed proposals to shift more decision-making out of politics and toward a body like the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) put forward by the Administration. CBO noted that this type of approach could lead to significant long-term savings in federal spending on health care and that the available evidence implies that a substantial share of spending on health care contributes little, if anything, to the overall health of the nation. This supports what President Obama has said all along: we can reduce waste and unnecessary spending without reducing quality of care and benefits.

The point of the proposal, however, was never to generate savings over the next decade. (Indeed, under the Administration’s approach, the IMAC system would not even begin to make recommendations until 2015.) Instead, the goal is to provide a mechanism for improving quality of care for beneficiaries and reducing costs over the long term. In other words, in the terminology of our belt-and-suspenders approach to a fiscally responsible health reform, the IMAC is a game changer not a scoreable offset.

With regard to the long-term impact, CBO suggested that the proposal, with several specific tweaks that would strengthen its operations, could generate significant savings. [...]

The bottom line is that it is very rare for CBO to conclude that a specific legislative proposal would generate significant long-term savings so it is noteworthy that, with some modifications, CBO reached such a conclusion with regard to the IMAC concept.

A final note is worth underscoring. As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. [...]

[I]t is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.

Read the whole thing here.

The headline of my earlier post was lifted from the Politico piece: "CBO deals new blow to health plan". Easy to understand, dramatic, and memorable. Now then, isn't that just like the Rushpublics?

Here we go again. We have the usual challenge: Refute, explain, repeat, and make it easy to understand, and hopefully, memorable.

H/t: Ellen

Peter Orszag to be April 1 guest on The Daily Show

By GottaLaff

Cute nerd alert: Peter Orszag will be Jon Stewart's guest on The Daily Show tomorrow night:

Upcoming Guests

Wednesday

April 1

Peter Orszag

Economist

Orszag: House, Senate budget blueprints like Obama's

By GottaLaff

On track:

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said Wednesday that the budget blueprints being taken up by the House and Senate almost mirror the proposal put forth by President Obama.

"If you look at budget resolutions in both House and Senate, they are from the same family as the president's budget," Orszag said. "The resolution may not be identical twins, but they are certainly brothers who look an awful lot alike."

Orszag said the administration was "very pleased" that the budget plans of Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chairmen of the budget committees in their respective chambers, have the same four priorities that the president's plan has: healthcare, energy, education and deficit reduction.

Orszag praised Spratt's and Conrad's proposals for cutting the $1.8 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2009 by more than half by 2013 and including a healthcare reserve fund.

Obama's plan sought to do the same, Orszag noted. [...]

But while Orszag highlighted the similarities between the plans' goals, he acknowledged differences in their approaches. The Obama plan spelled out how the administration would pay for the reserve fund, seen as a down payment on healthcare reform, by including a budget line for new tax revenue from limits on itemized tax deductions. The House and Senate proposals haven't specified how they will pay for the fund.

Orszag said that adjustments were "natural" during the legislative process...

More details here.