HYGO News Psaki: Costs Zero Even After CBO Debunked, Not Cause Staffing Shortages, Nominee Eminently Qualified
Psaki Insists Build Back Better “Costs Zero” After CBO Finds $160 Billion Deficit, Denies Vaccine Mandate Staffing Issues, Defends “Communist” Nominee
On November 19, 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki held a briefing dominated by three contentious exchanges. Fox News reporter Peter Doocy confronted Psaki with the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that Build Back Better would add at least $160 billion to the deficit over ten years — directly contradicting President Biden’s repeated claim that the bill cost “zero” — and caught her with her own tweet criticizing the Trump administration for dismissing CBO scores. Psaki denied that the federal vaccine mandate, set to take effect that Monday, would cause staffing shortages in government operations. And she defended Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, after Senator Marco Rubio called her “a communist,” saying she “enjoyed” Senator Elizabeth Warren’s pushback and that Omarova was “eminently qualified.”
Doocy vs. Psaki: “16 Trillion Cents”
The sharpest exchange of the briefing came when Doocy asked whether Biden would stop claiming that Build Back Better did not increase the deficit “one single cent” now that the nonpartisan CBO had found otherwise.
“Is the President going to stop saying that the Build Back Better plan does not increase the deficit one single cent if we now know that that is not true?” Doocy asked.
“It is true,” Psaki responded. She acknowledged the CBO score but argued it undervalued one particular revenue source: “IRS enforcement is not something that there’s a lot of experience in the CBO scoring. They still scored it, but it is undervalued by the assessment of many economists and experts.”
Doocy pushed back with Biden’s own words: “Which Joe Biden himself, in 2010, called the ‘gold standard’ for Democrats and Republicans.”
The White House’s position was that the CBO had scored IRS tax enforcement revenue at approximately $200 billion over ten years, while the administration projected $400 billion — a discrepancy of 100 percent. Psaki cited former CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, who had noted that “estimating the returns on additional IRS enforcement was challenging because large funding infusions to the agency had little precedent, and it was difficult to quantify the indirect effects of more auditors.”
Doocy converted the deficit figure into the administration’s own metric: “The CBO’s projection is that it’s going to — that there’s going to be at least a $160 billion increase to the deficit over 10 years. That is 16 trillion cents. So the President was not telling the truth.”
Psaki’s response relied on expertise rather than numbers: “This is an area where experts — economic experts — neither of us are one.”
Psaki’s Own Tweet Comes Back
Doocy then produced Psaki’s most damaging contradiction. He read back a tweet she had written during the Trump administration: “Watching Mulvaney try to walk away from a CBO score and explain the budget outline is awkward and uncomfortable to watch.”
“So what is the difference between the Trump administration saying, ‘Don’t listen to the CBO’ and the Biden administration saying, ‘Don’t listen to the CBO’?” Doocy asked.
Psaki attempted to draw a distinction: “Actually, we’ve praised the overall work of the CBO on the Build Back Better Act repeatedly. And that’s what we believe.” She argued the administration was only disputing one specific component of the scoring — IRS enforcement revenue — rather than dismissing the CBO entirely.
But the parallel was difficult to escape. In both cases, an administration was selectively challenging a CBO score that produced unfavorable numbers for its legislative priorities. The tweet demonstrated that Psaki herself had once viewed such selective challenges as embarrassing when performed by the other party.
Another reporter pressed on the math: the CBO estimated IRS enforcement would bring in just over $200 billion while the administration claimed $400 billion. “I don’t think they’re just throwing darts,” the reporter noted. “Twice as much — there’s a big discrepancy.”
A third reporter calculated that even using the CBO’s lower figure, the annual deficit impact would be approximately $17 billion — “a drop in the bucket compared to the natural deficits the country is running up right now.” The reporter asked whether that might be “palatable to Senator Manchin.” Psaki declined to speak for Manchin or the American people but maintained the administration’s position that the bill would “reduce the deficit over the course of 10 years."
"No Governmental Operational Disruptions” from Vaccine Mandate
The briefing opened with questions about the federal civilian workforce vaccine mandate, which was set to take effect on Monday, November 22. Reporters asked whether the administration was concerned about staffing shortages.
Psaki’s answer was categorical: “We do not anticipate facing any governmental operational disruptions due to this requirement. And in fact, the requirement will avoid disruptions in our view and our labor force.”
She clarified the timeline: the deadline was “not 12:01 a.m. that morning, but by the end of the day” on November 22. The distinction was significant because it gave federal employees until the close of business to demonstrate compliance rather than requiring proof at the start of the workday.
The claim that the mandate would cause no disruptions was contested by critics who pointed to public outcry from federal employees, military personnel, and contractors who objected to the requirement. In the weeks and months that followed, court challenges and compliance issues would create ongoing friction, though mass staffing shortages did not materialize on the scale opponents had predicted.
Omarova: “Eminently Qualified” or “Communist”?
A reporter asked about Senator Marco Rubio’s characterization of Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, as “a communist.” Omarova, a law professor at Cornell University, had been born in the Soviet Union and had faced Republican criticism over her academic writings, which some senators argued reflected anti-capitalist views incompatible with overseeing the nation’s banking system.
Psaki’s response was notably personal in tone: “I did see some of that commentary. I also enjoyed the pushback from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who maybe we should just point to as our response.”
She then offered the administration’s defense: “The President nominated her to serve in this job because she is eminently qualified. And she’s somebody who would represent the role and the United States effectively in the position, and certainly we’re hopeful she’s confirmed.”
The nomination was already in serious trouble. In addition to Republican opposition, several moderate Democrats had expressed reservations. Omarova would withdraw her nomination on December 7, 2021, less than three weeks after this briefing, after it became clear she did not have the votes for confirmation in the evenly divided Senate.
Biden’s Health and McCarthy’s Marathon Speech
Two additional exchanges drew attention. A reporter cited a Politico/Morning Consult poll showing that 50 percent of voters surveyed did not agree with the statement that President Biden was “in good health,” with voters “almost evenly split” on whether he was in good mental health. The reporter acknowledged the White House disagreed with the assessment but asked where voters’ concerns were coming from.
Psaki attributed the sentiment to misinformation: “There are certainly quite a bit of conspiracy theory pushing out there on a range of social media platforms.” She declined to engage further with the polling data.
On McCarthy’s record-breaking eight-hour-and-33-minute floor speech against Build Back Better the previous night, Psaki was dismissive: “Kevin McCarthy said a lot of words — a lot of words. I just want to emphasize that over the course of eight and a half hours.” She noted that McCarthy had, among other things, “shared his wish that he could have been in Tiananmen Square,” “mused about whether or not Abraham Lincoln was actually assassinated,” and shared thoughts about “picturing America in a swim meet after World War II against every other country.”
The summary was intended to trivialize the speech, though McCarthy’s address had succeeded in its tactical goal of delaying the Build Back Better vote from Thursday evening to Friday morning.
Ambassador Backlog and Other Business
The briefing also touched on the administration’s frustration with the pace of ambassador confirmations. Psaki described the backlog as “unprecedented,” noting that “many of these ambassadors will move forward with bipartisan support once there’s a vote” but that Republican insistence on lengthy debate processes was preventing unanimous consent. She acknowledged the delays “certainly hurt our national security.”
A reporter pressed on the fact that Biden had not yet nominated ambassadors to key posts including Ukraine and Hungary, which was “not anything tied up in Congress” but rather an administration decision. Psaki said the president “certainly wants to ensure we have the right person to nominate for each of those vital and important positions.”
The briefing ended on a lighter note with questions about the Thanksgiving turkey pardon, during which Psaki confirmed that the turkeys were staying in a hotel — a detail her daughter “did not believe me” about.
Key Takeaways
- Doocy confronted Psaki with the CBO’s finding of a $160 billion deficit increase from Build Back Better — “16 trillion cents” — and read back her own tweet mocking the Trump administration for dismissing CBO scores, to which Psaki argued the administration was only disputing IRS enforcement revenue estimates, not the CBO’s overall credibility.
- Psaki declared there would be “no governmental operational disruptions” from the federal vaccine mandate taking effect November 22, called Biden’s bank watchdog nominee Saule Omarova “eminently qualified” after Rubio called her “a communist,” and attributed Biden’s 50% negative health perception in polls to “conspiracy theory” on social media.
- Psaki dismissed McCarthy’s record-breaking 8-hour-33-minute floor speech as “a lot of words” that included musings about Tiananmen Square and Lincoln’s assassination, while acknowledging an “unprecedented” ambassador confirmation backlog that she said “certainly hurt our national security.”