Today President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate me as director of the Office of Management and Budget. I am therefore resigning as director of CBO and this will be my final blog entry.
I have absolutely loved my time at CBO. CBO is unique because it combines rigor, relevance, and range. Rigor reflects the intellectual integrity of what CBO does. Relevance speaks to the importance of what it does. And range reflects the wide array of topics upon which CBO has something important to say from national security to labor markets to natural resources, health care, immigration, and the list goes on and on and on. (This blog has also been a special treat: it has provided another way of discussing CBOs work and some of my own views about the policy world.)
Perhaps most fundamentally, CBO is a reflection of the smart and hard-working but also warm and wonderful people who work here. (If you find it hard to believe that budget analysts and economists can be warm and wonderful, please just take my word for it.) I have worked with many outstanding people in both the public sector and the private sector, and the CBO staff is truly exceptional in its analytical capability and its devotion to the work it does.
I will very much miss CBO, and hope that I will do it proud if I am confirmed by the Senate to assume my new post.
Peter R. Orszag