The current director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, is pretty widely respected on both left and right, and even a lot of Republicans were hoping he’d be reappointed to a new term by the incoming Congress. But despite his sterling credentials, Elmendorf is insufficiently dedicated to the conservative idée fixe of dynamic scoring, which insists that tax 
cuts will supercharge the economy and thus cost much less than you’d think. So today the CBO got a new director:
GOP dismisses CBO director, picks Republican stalwart as chief scorekeeper
Republicans Friday announced they will not keep current chief congressional scorekeeper Douglas Elmendorf and will replace him with Keith Hall, an economist with a long record of service in Washington and deep ties to Republicans.
….The CBO celebrated its 40th anniversary earlier this week, where past directors from both parties praised Mr. Elmendorf for his even-handed approach to the job. But Republicans had wanted to push the CBO to go further in the way it evaluates tax cuts by using so-called “dynamic scoring” to take into account the potential economic benefit feedback loop that could stem from Americans paying less to the federal government after a tax cut.
I’m not sure Hall has taken a public stand on the virtues of dynamic scoring, but it’s probably safe to assume that he’s more sympathetic to it than Elmendorf was. Should make for a fun few years.
