Topic: WorldNetDaily
Art Moore whines in a July 3 WorldNetDaily article:
The Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the Senate Republicans’ initial health-care proposal fueled Democrat complaints that the GOP is heartlessly stripping millions of their insurance plans.
Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will send a revised bill to the CBO next week for scoring, apparently hoping to trim the CBO’s estimate that more than 22 million Americans would lose their health insurance in the next 10 years if the legislation passed in its current form. House Republicans passed their own version three weeks ago without waiting for a CBO score. It replaced an earlier version the CBO had said would result in 24 million being without insurance.
But critics of the CBO — described as a bipartisan federal agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information and assessment to Congress — wonder why a Republican Congress would allow a group with a history of inaccurate forecasts that typically fail to account for the impact of market forces. And some have called for the agency to be disbanded or replaced.
[...]
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has proposed outsourcing the projections of budget legislation to three to five professional firms that understand the interaction between legislation and the marketplace.
He wants them to compete against each other, and the worst performer, including the CBO, would lose its contract.
Gingrich argues the CBO does not score legislation dynamically. It ignores growth that results from tax cuts and the reduced growth that results from tax increases in its projections.
Failing to model reality, he contends, the CBO “creates an inherent legislative bias toward more taxes and budget gimmicks.”
Moore and Gingrich don't explain how speculative and unquantifiable "growth that results from tax cuts" should be scored to reflect that "reality."
As a loyal conservative, Moore makes it clear his animus toward the CBO is totally partisan: "The reaction in Congress to the CBO scoring of the current Senate health-care bill reflects the cynicism many Republicans have toward the agency’s work."
