Independence of CBO rankles some lawmakers
WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office is a scorekeeper suddenly in the spotlight.
Monday’s estimate of the House GOP’s health-care measure gave ammunition to Democratic critics of the law, predicting that 14 million people would lose insurance next year. Republicans had been bracing for the report, with some of them attacking CBO as being inaccurate in past assessments.
The obscure but respected agency, established under the 1974 budget act, provides cost estimates of legislation, baseline projections of the federal budget and its components, and independent economic and deficit statistics for lawmakers.
Respected, not infallible
CBO is respected for the nonpartisan rigor its 200-plus employees put into the 600 or so official cost estimates it performs each year — and the thousands of informal estimates it provides as committees draft legislation. But it’s hardly infallible, especially when considering large, complex and far-ranging legislation like the Affordable Care Act.
The agency’s estimates, for instance, significantly overstated the number of people who would buy insurance on state and federal exchanges under the law, in part because it thought the individual mandate and accompanying tax penalties would be more effective in forcing people to buy insurance.
“Predicting the effects of large policy changes is always difficult, but CBO’s predictions for the (Affordable Care Act) in 2010 were much more accurate than the predictions of many Republican opponents of the law,” said former agency chief Doug Elmendorf, who was appointed by Democrats.
New sheriff in town
CBO Director Keith Hall, a conservative economist, was selected two years ago by Republican Tom Price, then the chairman of the House Budget Committee and now the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Hall had been a critic of the Affordable Care Act and increasing the minimum wage. He has overseen an increase, long sought by Republicans, in the use of “dynamic scoring” — in which the economic effects of tax changes and other policies are incorporated into CBO’s analysis. CBO, for instance, has said Obama’s health law has had a dampening effect on labor force participation and would slightly reduce growth.
But CBO also disagrees with those who characterize “Obamacare” as in a “death spiral” and predicts that this year’s big jumps in insurance premiums — averaging 21percent nationwide — are actually likely to stabilize going forward with increases of 5 percent to 6 percent.
Criticism is common
Criticism of the CBO is hardly new, but it is unusual to be coming from top officials like White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that “estimating the impact of a bill of this size probably isn’t the best use of (the CBO’s) time.” That remark sparked criticism from agency defenders on social media sites.
But complaining about bad scores is nothing new. Democrats complained when drafting Obamacare; Republicans are carping now.
“For more than 40 years, we’ve produced independent analysis of budgetary and economic issues,” Hall said in January. “The feedback I’ve always gotten is that we in general have a very strong reputation for our work. We try very, very hard to be independent and nonpartisan.”