He has done a very good job--both at the CBO and earlier at the CEA.

I do wish that David Rosenbaum could have written the real story: the story is that under Doug the CBO produced a lot of highly credible and useful information to assist Congress in making its decisions. It's not that Doug was a "thorn in the side" of the Bush administration. Reality was the "thorn in the side."

Director of Congressional Budget Office to Leave - New York Times: Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, a former White House economist who has often been a thorn in the side of the Bush administration since he became director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office nearly three years ago, announced on Monday that he planned to leave at the end of the year.

In a message to the budget office staff, Mr. Holtz-Eakin, 47, said he would join the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations here.... Mr. Holtz-Eakin is the most recent in a series to irritate Republican Congressional leaders by refusing to adopt a party line. Within weeks of his appointment by Republican leaders in early 2003, Mr. Holtz-Eakin declared, to their dismay, that Mr. Bush's tax and spending plans would do little or nothing to stimulate long-term economic growth. Subsequently, the budget office released a report that found that Mr. Bush's tax cuts were heavily skewed in favor of the wealthiest Americans. Mr. Holtz-Eakin rejected Republican demands that budget forecasts take account of strengthened economic activity from tax cuts without analyzing the drag caused by increased spending.

Under his direction, the budget office often took issue with the political goals of Republicans. It raised doubts about proposals to partly privatize the Social Security system, concluded that abolishing estate taxes would reduce charitable contributions and calculated that allowing same-sex marriages would slightly increase federal revenues. Donald B. Marron, the deputy director, will become the acting director of the budget office until Congressional leaders choose a replacement for Mr. Holtz-Eakin.