Cass Sunstein: Don't Hold Me to What I Wrote 8 Years Ago, I Was Young at the Time [He Was 48]

Nice to know I can still use that handy excuse for another decade or so.

President Barack Obama’s regulatory czar retreated from a 2003 academic report he wrote advocating that government assign a higher monetary value to the lives of young people than to senior citizens during testimony to Congress on Friday.

Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the Obama administration’s plans for reviewing and reducing federal regulations.

“I’m a lot older now than the author with my name was, and I’m not sure what I think about what that young man wrote,” Sunstein, 56, told the House panel. “Things written as an academic are not a legitimate part of what we do as a government official. So I am not focusing on sentences that a young Cass Sunstein wrote years ago. So the answer is no.”

Sunstein wrote the paper when he was a professor at the University of Chicago. It was titled “Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay.”

Burgess said he would take him at his word, “But still, it does point out an important philosophical approach, and many of us are concerned about the Independent Payment Advisory Board right now.

Feeling better about the death panels yet?