Pamela H. Moomau, In Memoriam

Pamela H. Moomau, a beloved member of the NTA family, and staff member of the Joint Committee on Taxation passed away in April 2019.

Pam was an active member of NTA, a member of the Board of Directors, and a frequent contributor to the National Tax Journal and participant in NTA conferences. For many years, Pam edited the quarterly NTA newsletter.

Pam served on the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation since 1991. Over the ensuing 28 years, she applied her skill on many legislative issues brought to the staff of the Joint Committee by the Congress.

Pam was a leader in the development of the Joint Committee’s macroeconomic models. Pam led the Joint Committee’s 1997 symposium entitled “Modeling the Macroeconomic Consequences of Tax Policy.” This represented the Congress’s first attempt to bring serious and thorough macroeconomic modeling to bear on proposed changes in tax policy. This work led to the development and deployment of the Joint Committee’s macroeconomic models. Pam was a leader of the Joint Committee’s macroeconomic team for 20 years and oversaw the publication of the Congress’s first macroeconomic report of proposed tax legislation in 2003 (the “Jobs and Growth Reconciliation Tax Act of 2003”). She not only worked on modeling and testing the various macroeconomic models developed by the Joint Committee staff, but was also the primary author and coordinated the preparation of most of the macroeconomic reports used in developing the legislation that became Public Law 115-97 (also called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”).

Pam was a key economist in the Joint Committee’s collaborative efforts with the Congressional Budget Office to model and estimate the effects of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent legislative initiatives to modify, repeal, or replace the Affordable Care Act.

In addition, Pam was a significant contributor to the Joint Committee’s “Red Book,” a ground breaking publication on the methodology for the distributional analysis of Federal tax legislation. Pam also developed estimates for many legislative proposals offered by the Congress on topics as diverse as those to modify the excise taxation of bows and arrows, fishing tackle, and firearms’ ammunition.

Pam applied sound economic analysis to every issue the Congress brought to her. She readily accepted projects that were analytically difficult and often data deficient. She was tireless in her dedication to the work of the Joint Committee. Her Joint Committee colleagues attest that the Congress’s deliberations regarding tax policy benefited from the enhanced quality of the information that the Joint Committee provided due to the work of Pamela H. Moomau.