When reading about some important political decision made by the reigning potentates of some past age, you invariably get one of those "okay, these people were not entirely like us" reminders when you get to the part about the pre-decision augury.  Until some time in the Eighteenth Century, no government on Earth, however constituted, would dream of taking a momentous decision of state without first engaging in some kind of superstitious rot.  Some civilizations tended to beseech the gods to look with favor upon their enterprise after they made the decision, it while others sought divine guidance before making the decision.  Often they did both.  Thus, leaders of Greek city states always consulted with the Oracle of Delphi before declaring war, Roman priests cut open animals and closely examined their guts for signs of godly approval, and medieval kings prayed for divine guidance before declaring war and/or obtained the approval of some suitably impressive clergyman after they assembled the army. 

Often, of course, this was mere theatre, pure propaganda.  The rulers decided what they wanted to do and then used ritual to confer divine legitimacy upon their decision in the eyes of the ignorant rabble they ruled.  Just as often, however, the rulers were themselves as influenced by the superstitious rot as the ignorant rabble.  It seems to have depended not upon the civilization but, rather, upon the degree of personal piety of a given decision maker.  And, not infrequently, it worked both ways.  Romans in particular seemed  have a propensity for cynically manipulating augury ceremonies for propaganda purposes only to themselves succumb to terrified impotence because of the appearance of some fearful omen during the execution of their plan. 

So you read about these people and you have your little snort of derision at the vast influence that superstition and ritualistic nonsense had on policy in pre-Enlightment history and take that into account in trying to make sense of their actions.  I do anyway. 

And then I looked at the ridiculously outsized role that CBO projections have come to play in our policy debates and I realized that, in fact, very little has changed. 

Now never let it be said that I am accusing CBO of slanting its estimates for political purposes.  CBO is not politicized except in the sense that it is driven by the normal bureaucratic imperative to continue to exist, which, in its case, depends upon the preservation, at all costs, of its reputation for being "non-partisan" and "sound" with both parties. 

And that's what makes the paramount importance that CBO estimates have assumed in the legislative process so utterly surreal.  CBO goes to great lengths to cultivate its reputation for being "nonpartisan" and "objective" and "square-shooters" because if it lost it, its budget and importance would be at risk. But it is that same bureaucratic imperative that causes them to consistently overestimate the cost of, say, health care bills and imposes an institutional blindness to cost savings that can't be psuedo-quantified on the basis of something that was done in the past. 

Viewed in economic terms, CBO produces a product, guesses about the future cost of legislative proposals.  It's main competition in the production of that product is the White House Office of Management and Budget.  There are other minor competitors in D.C. in the form of various private foundations and think tanks, but, the market is dominated by CBO and OMB.  CBO thus goes to considerable effort to distinguish it's products from OMB's in a way that makes its products more popular and prestigious among those in a position to influence its budget and power. 

Turns out, that's pretty easy to do.  OMB, you see, is under control of a political appointee and thus more prone to use "rosy projections" to make the President's proposals look good. Everyone knows that.  Thus, all CBO has to do is say a given proposal will cost more and/or save less than OMB's projection claims and CBO's projection will be hailed by the Village MSM and the Congressional opposition (regardless of party) alike as being the very paragon of perfection in prescient prognostication. 

And, yes, it is, in fact, true that OMB tends to use assumptions more favorable to the President's position than CBO, but the extent to which it is true varies depending on who's president and who he's made head of OMB.  That variability alone, however, diminishes the Villagers' willingness to give credence to OMB estimates even during the times when the prevailing political winds blow in favor of making OMB estimates more "realistic." 

The end result is that unimpeachable, unshakable iron-clad Villager CW deems CBO's guesses to always be  better than anyone else's because they're "nonpartisan."  And, being, "better," they are invariably treated as infallible projections of the future such that to the extent cost is an issue in legislation, the CBO cost projection is treated as if it came directly from the Burning Bush to the ears of Moses.  Beyond question, beyond certainty, as firmly established as commandments carved onto stone by the very finger of God. 

And that's what's so bloody maddening.  Our whole political process is driven by a huge, glaring, obvious non sequitur.  One of the fundamental axioms of  Beltway CW is that "non-partisan" is synonymous with "truth," and indeed, "perfectly accurate" when, in fact, a lot of the methodological constraints CBO imposes upon itself to preserve it's all-important reputation for being "unbiased" substantially detract from their ability to more accurately SWAG future costs. 

And the truth is, even without the burden of self-imposed methodological constraints deemed necessary to preserve its reputation, any economic projection of events that are more than a year or two out is, in fact, pure SWAG--a Strictly Wild-Assed Guess (actual industry term, btw).  It is like trying to predict the number of hurricanes there will be in a season--literally impossible to do for functionally identical mathematical reasons. 

For all the methodological mumbo jumbo piously incanted in its reports, CBO projections have about as much relation to what's really going to happen in the future as the hydrocarbon-fueled gibberish spouted by the Oracle of Delphi.  The smugly confident certainty that infuses MSM reporting about CBO projections has about as much relation to what will really happen in the future  as the ambiguious riddles that the Oracle's intercessor would provide by way of translation of the Oracle's gibberish. 

And yet, there they are in the Capitol, right now, following the time-hallowed D.C. ritual.  They're making decisions that will affect millions of people for years to come on the basis of "projections" that have no more meaning than if they had simply asked some random stranger on the Metro to pick a number, any number, between seven hundred billion and 1.5 trillion.  Some in DC know the CBO SWAG Temple's prophecies are mathematical gibberish but gleefully use them to further their own ends.  Others are as pious and certain in their belief in them as Joan d'Arc was in her visions from the Blessed Mother. 

But even among the former, like the Roman politician who fixed the chicken gut ceremony but then recoiled in superstitious dead when a  dead bird dropped from the sky, each and every one of them has a superstitious dread of the number "one trillion,"  whether representative of projected expenditures over a year, a decade or a century. 

We're not so different from those old guys, after all.