Uses of Agency Blogs

Many tears have been shed over the fate of the Congressional Budget Office Blog since Peter Orszag left for the Office of Management and Budget, taking his Diet Cokes and geek-chic with him. But though it's not updated extremely frequently, the CBO blog is often extremely useful: it tackles specific questions, provides new information, and doesn't manufacture posts--instead, the office posts when they've got something to day. Today's post, which explains how programs are scored for cost, using Medicare and Medicaid as examples, is perfect: we were just having a debate in the office a few days ago about the vagaries of scoring bills that rely on lifestyle choices. This doesn't answer all the questions we had, but it's a good start.