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Interesting new development

According to the Daily Tax Report (subscribers only, so this link may not work for all users):

"Edward Kleinbard is leaving the Joint Committee on Taxation after nearly 20 months as its chief of staff, lobbyists and congressional staffers said April 21.

"Kleinbard is expected to leave his post May 15. It is not clear who will serve as acting chief of staff. Last time there was a vacancy, Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas Barthold served as acting chief of staff for nearly two years.

"Prior to coming to Washington, Kleinbard was a partner with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in Manhattan. Sources said Kleinbard will join the faculty of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law."

I personally wouldn't be surprised if Barthold becomes the permanent Chief, and that would certainly be a good outcome. I doubt that many outsiders of Kleinbard's or his predecessor George Yin's stature, be they leading practitioners or academics, would want the job at this point.

Some readers may know that I am a big fan of Kleinbard's scholarship and work, as well as a friend. At the JCT, he did a great job of advancing the ball on tax expenditures and in generally making the JCT issue pamphlets more serious intellectual contributions that merited broad reading.

Obviously the current political environment, even post-2006 and indeed post-2008, makes it hard for the JCT to play the substantive political role that it had decades ago, before the committee and member staffs got to their current size. Even the institutional independence that, say, the CBO chief but not the JCT chief currently has would be welcome from a policy standpoint, but it's hard to see why Congress would ever choose to grant it.

I anticipate that Kleinbard will be an outstanding academic success - smart move by USC Law School in signing him up.

Full post as published by Start Making Sense on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).