CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The White House has criticized the Congressional Budget Office's findings that the Obama administration's proposal to control Medicare costs would yield a moderate savings of $2 billion over the next decade.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said the CBO's analysis - which it relayed to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Saturday - could feed a perception of the office's bias toward "exaggerating costs and underestimating savings."

"The point of the proposal ... was never to generate savings over the next decade," Orszag said in a letter posted on Saturday.

"Instead the goal is to provide a mechanism for improving quality of care for beneficiaries and reducing costs over the long term."
Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) – White House Budget Direct Peter Orszag said Sunday that the struggling economy has backed away from the precipice it was teetering on late last year but a return to economic growth has not occurred yet.

“Where we are is the sense of free fall that we had back in December . . . we’ve stepped back from that precipice but we’re not yet in the growth zone,” Orszag said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Most private sector forecasters are suggesting that won’t happen till later this year.”

Orszag also said Sunday that unemployment – now approaching 10 percent nationally – could take some time to turn around.
Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A senior aide to President Obama said Sunday that the president’s ambitious goal of having a health care reform bill done by Congress’ August recess remains on track despite some recent indications that Congress may not be able to get the legislation done within Obama’s timeframe.

“None of this is easy,” Obama Budget Director Peter Orszag said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “there’s a reason why this hasn’t happened in 50 years and we’re making a lot of progress.”

Orszag reiterated the president’s commitment to sign a health care reform bill only if it is deficit-neutral over the first ten years after passage and Orszag acknowledged that “in the short run, some additional revenue is going to be required” to meet that condition.

Orszag revealed Sunday the White House has proposed to Congressional leaders legislative text relating to an independent commission of doctors. That panel, the administration believes, would help make the policymaking process more flexible by ultimately leading to lower health care costs and higher quality over time.

Orszag also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that getting the legislation done by August remains the White House’s “goal.”
Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) – White House Budget Director Peter Orszag offered a window Sunday into President Obama’s ambitious plans to reform the nation’s health care system while dealing with record budget deficits and the nation’s struggling economy.

“We have always said health care reform has to be deficit-neutral over a five- or ten-year window,” Orszag said on CNN’s State of the Union when asked whether the White House might take on higher deficits in order to fund one of the president’s big domestic agenda items.

“And then much better than that over the long term. So we are very committed to making sure that health care reform is self-financing and also brings down costs over time both for families and for the federal government. So you are not going to see a deficit-increasing health care reform.”

Obama’s budget guru refused to say whether the president would sign a health care reform legislation that included a provision taxing employer-provided health care insurance benefits as one means of helping to finance health care reform.

“It was not in the president’s campaign plan, it wasn’t in our budget. Clearly there are some members of Congress who are putting it on the table. We’re going to have to let this play out,” said Orszag said
Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The high interest in receiving grant money from the White House’s $787 billion stimulus package has the potential to overwhelm www.grants.gov, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said in memo issued Wednesday.

In recent months, the Web site, the central online portal where the public can search and apply for competitive grants from the federal government, has suffered from “noticeably degraded performance,” Orszag wrote. “In addition, [the stimulus bill] is expected to result in an approximately 60 percent additional increase in application volume to Grants.gov, putting the system at a significant risk of failure and thus potentially hampering [the bill’s] implementation.”

Read: Orszag's memo

In order to keep the site up and running, Orszag has instructed the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that operates grants.gov, and the General Services Administration to develop improvements that will deal with the anticipated increase in traffic.

In the memo, Orszag also instructs federal agencies to identify alternative methods for accepting grant applications during the coming months when high interest in seeking stimulus money is expected by OMB.

Related: Orszag emerges from behind the scenes

WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Obama's budget director told CNN's John King the spending bill before Congress right now is "uglier than we'd like," but insisted the administration had little power to change it - and little choice but to support it, to preserve funding for key White House priorities.

"This is like your relief pitcher coming into the ninth inning, and wanting to redo the whole game," said Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on State of the Union Sunday. "Next year we're going to be the starting pitcher, and the game's going to be completely different."

Watch Orszag on why the White House says it can't change the bill

The spending bill currently being considered by Congress contains thousands of earmarks - nearly $8 billion directed by lawmakers for specific projects in their home states. As a candidate, Obama campaigned on a pledge of earmark reform.

Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) - At 40, Peter Orszag is the youngest member of the Obama Cabinet and one of People magazine's "hottest." These days he's also front and center of the president's key policy initiatives.

Orszag, director of the Office of Budget and Management, will present the White House's first budget blueprint on Thursday. It will include spending cuts and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, beginning the effort to halve the nation's deficit by the end of President Obama's first term.

Watch Obama lay out his budget priorities

In an interview in his White House office, Orszag told CNN, "We are not going to play the games that have been played in the past ... pretending that there will never be another hurricane, natural disaster... or assuming that a war can be ended instantaneously and there is no need to budget out your costs."

That means cuts to many departments. It's his job to inform Cabinet members about coming trims, which is why OMB directors sometimes have been called hatchet men.

Full story